
ThE-PRACTICE- 

SELf-CULTURL- 



rttVGH-BLACK 





v ' «<?>* 

c- . V N 



> 



- # 






'". %/ 









V 5 - 



,-0' ^ 












. V 



W 



'A V 6 



^ % : 

^ 



o 



V * 



<p ,< v 



\ v <P 



**-% 






V 






^ - 









ft, ** 










%- 






, i 



^ ^ 



!7^' 









w 



j> ^ 









V<^ 



tf y •>'- 



«SJ \N * 







A X> '>- 

























, 



^ N 



■^ aN 






o o 



THE PRACTICE OF 
SELF-CULTURE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

CULTURE AND RESTRAINT 

FRIENDSHIP 

WORK 



THE PRACTICE 



OF 



SELF-CULTURE 



BY 

HUGH BLACK 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
All rights reserved 



**£ 



Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting." 

Shakespeare. 



THF. LIERARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

OCT 17 i»04 

Copyright Entry , 
CLASS, A* *Xe. Vloi 



Copyright, 1904, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. * Bublished October, 1904. 



Nortooot) Jprrsa 

J. B. Culling & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, MaHB., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

The author recently published a book on " Cul- 
ture and Restraint," which was a somewhat philo- 
sophical discussion of the two great ideals of 
self-development and self-effacement, showing the 
strength and weakness of each and the need for 
a completer ideal which would include both. Ser- 
vice offers a great reconciling thought which finds 
room for the two opposing ideals. This present 
book deals with the practical ways in which the 
self can be equipped for service. It frankly 
admits that self-culture is not in itself a complete 
ideal for human life, but has its place as the 
necessary education to make a man's contribution 
to the world worthy. Nothing could be finer as 
a definition of education than Milton's, " I call a 
complete and generous education that which fits 
a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnani- 
mously, all the offices both private and public of 
peace and war." 

The author trusts that the title "The Practice 
of Self-Culture" will justify itself, not from the 



VI 



PREFACE 



point of view of giving many details, but of giving 
an impulse to practice. The counsels and details 
are well enough known, but our chief need is to 
lay hold of a comprehensive scheme into which 
our efforts will fall easily and the possession of 
which acts as an inducement. For example, in 
treating of bodily culture there might well be a 
paragraph with much good advice about eating 
and drinking, and another about sleep and the 
like, but these things, which would be in place 
in a manual of hygiene, are matters of common 
knowledge. What we need is the right view of 
the whole subject, which will make us treat the 
body sanely and reverently as an integral part of 
the life. Practical advice does not necessarily 
mean a list of petty precepts and counsels, but 
advice that will lead to practice ; and if this book 
gives to any reader some impulse in the great 
education of life, it will have served its purpose. 
A friend who has kindly looked over some of 
the proofs has suggested that younger readers 
who might find the first chapter a little difficult 
should read it last, and should begin with the 
second chapter. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface v 



I 

Proportional Development i 

II 

Culture of Body . . . . . . .35 

III 
Culture of Mind 69 

IV 

Instruments of Mental Culture . . . . 97 

V 

Culture and Specialism 127 

VI 

Culture of Imagination 153 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

VII 

PAGE 

Culture of Heart 185 

VIII 
Culture of Conscience 211 

IX 
Culture of Spirit 233 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



' I would have his outward fashion and mien, and the dis- 
position of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. 
'Tis not a soul, His not a body that we are training up, but a 
man, and we ought not to divide him.' — Montaigne. 



CHAPTER I 

PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

' I ^HE aim of self-culture is a legitimate one so 
-*■ far as it goes, setting as its ideal the just 
equipoise of all the nature, the due balance of 
powers, concurrent growth in all possible direc- 
tions. True vital efficiency, even bodily efficiency, 
depends on the harmony of all the varied pow- 
ers of a man's nature. It sometimes seems im- 
possible to combine the seemingly opposite 
qualities that go to the make-up of a complete 
man. It is easy to be one-sided, to specialise 
in character, to develop a part at the expense 
of the life as a whole. In practice we see the 
difficulty of combining such common opposites 
as duty to self and duty to others, to be wise for 
self-protection and simple in our relations with 
men — the ordinary situation which meets us 
every day in almost every act. The difficulty of 
life is to live truly and completely, to make the 
most of oneself, to become the highest character 

3 



4 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

that is possible. We cannot devote all our 
attention to one sphere of our nature without 
the whole suffering, and even that favoured 
sphere itself being weakened. However difficult 
it may be, we feel that in the true culture of 
character the ideal is balance of opposing ele- 
ments. The complete character must be full- 
orbed, with no undue development on one side, 
poised amid the warring forces of human nature, 
* below the storm-mark of the sky, above the 
flood-mark of the deep.' 

The fable of a warfare between different func- 
tions of the body is a common one in ancient 
literature, as in the speech of Menenius Agrippa 
recorded in Livy, and made famous to us by 
Shakespeare's use of it in Coriolanus. The illus- 
tration is taken from the various members of the 
body, each essential for perfect health and life, 
hand, eye, ear, all dependent on each other and 
all contributing to the good of the man. It was 
applied to the body politic to show the need of 
all grades of society taking their share in the 
national life and working sweetly and harmoni- 
ously for the good of the State. The common 
weal in all its grades and ranks is a conception 
which would naturally arise in ancient civic life, 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 5 

as it does in our modern social conditions. The 
real organic unity of society is one of the great 
fruitful truths which should lead the way in 
practical efforts for the betterment of all classes. 
St. Paul used the same illustration when teaching 
the unity of the Church amid its variety of gift 
and operation and administration. 'The body is 
not one member, but many. The eye cannot 
say to the hand, I have no need of thee : nor 
again the head to the feet, I have no need of 
thee. There should be no schism in the body, 
but the members should have the same care one 
for another.' 2 The Church is a social organism, 
and needs the use of the different forms of 
endowment and faculty which its members 
possess. All individual distinctions of gift and 
of temperament and of attainment, when con- 
secrated by a common faith and love, blend into 
one perfect life, as the colours of the spectroscope 
make up the one white light. Each member 
exists for the good of the whole, and only when 
each is performing his part can the whole be 
its best. 

The illustration is true for itself in the lower 
level of the individual, as well as in the wider 

1 I Cor. xii. 12-31. 



6 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

social range to which it was so often applied in 
ancient literature. After all, we should remember 
that it was taken from a truth of the personal 
life, and was applied to the larger life ; but the 
truth has not been exhausted by us even in its 
lower level. We have not applied it with suffi- 
cient vigour and breadth to the whole of our 
individual life. What is true of the body is true 
of the man : what is true of the physical side is 
true of complete human nature. The truth of 
the illustration needs to be enforced in the nar- 
row sphere of the individual life as well as in 
the wider sphere of the society. The personal 
ideal as well as the social ideal is proportional 
development — many members one body, many 
capacities one life. The unity of the social 
organism is a magnificent conception which will 
bear a great harvest in improved conditions and 
a deepening sense of corporate responsibility for 
all the members of the State ; as the unity of the 
Church carries with it great possibilities of com- 
fort and inspiration to all believing men. The 
unity of the individual life also has vast bear- 
ings on thought and conduct, and needs to be 
emphasised in all consideration of true and full 
education. 



i 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 7 

This is the main thesis of this book, which 
seeks to treat the various divisions of our nature 
as inseparably related to each other and to the 
complete life. It proposes to take the common 
principle of division, accepting the duty and the 
right of the culture of each power, and at the 
same time showing the danger of undue develop- 
ment and the need of concurrent growth. In- 
tellect, for example, must not be cultivated at 
the expense of the affections, and emotion must 
not entrench upon the place and power of the 
reason. We know in practice how easy it is 
in planting and tending a virtue to sow with 
it its corresponding vice. We need to have 
some scheme of what human nature stands for, 
that we may be able to apply it to our own 
case and see whether we are making the most 
of ourselves. It does not matter much what 
classification of the powers we follow. The 
simplest and the commonest is for practical 
purposes the best. The common division is 
that which begins with the body, the physical 
basis of life, and then considers the mental 
superstructure built on that, and then the moral 
and spiritual life. 

This is roughly the line we propose to take, 



8 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

applying in each case our main thesis that there 
should be no schism in a man's nature, and there- 
fore that all these parts of life merge into each 
other and affect each other. Naturally in a 
treatise on self-culture most space is allowed 
to that of intellect, which usually indeed arro- 
gates the title exclusively to itself. For clear- 
ness' sake a special chapter is given to the 
place of imagination as a special power of mind 
which asks for separate consideration. 

The method of self-culture, which takes our- 
selves to bits and goes over each part piece- 
meal, looking after the interests of the various 
sections, now the development of body and 
now the claims of mind, is not a complete 
method, and runs risks from which culture has 
rarely escaped of a narrowness of its own and 
sometimes an empty conceit. It suffers also 
from its subjective method, and too little appre- 
ciates the healthy unconcern of the man of 
action who never stops to inquire within of 
himself. But anything is better than living 
at random, making no attempt at any sort of 
self-knowledge or self-improvement. The surface 
life is easy enough to lead, living with no defi- 
nite object, only satisfying instinct when it 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 9 

becomes imperious enough to compel us, but 
with no intelligent conception as to what we 
should be and may be. Ruskin's condemnation 
of much of our modern life was that it appeared 
as if our only two objects were, whatever we 
have to get more, and wherever we are to go 
somewhere else. This aimless discontent is 
largely due to the meagre view of human life 
which comes from lack of a sincere endeavour 
after self-knowledge. 

A large culture which aims at complete self- 
realisation, seeking the perfection of one's whole 
nature in a complete unity of character, must 
be confessed to be rather of the nature of an 
ideal than an actual reality. Even so, it is 
something worth striving after ; for it will 
deepen our self-knowledge, make it more fruit- 
ful, and show us where are the points of least 
resistance which need to be strengthened. It 
is much to know where our weak points are — 
few men get even as far as that in self-knowledge. 
They hide their weaknesses from themselves, 
and never make a frank and candid examina- 
tion of their attainments. To take stock of 
our assets sometimes is as wise a thing in life 
as it is in business. A man has been known 



io PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

to drift into bankruptcy in business, because he 
dreads the revelation which a close inquiry into 
his affairs would bring, and prefers to shut his 
eyes to the real state of matters. The same 
half-conscious fear sometimes keeps a man from 
self-examination, in case he may lay bare to 
himself the poverty of the land. Only the man 
who has never examined his own knowledge 
can plume himself on its sufficiency either in 
quality or quantity. Rather, the profounder 
the knowledge, the more does true humility 
deepen. When we scrutinise our ideas of things 

— even our common and well-established ideas 

— we discover how vague some of them are, 
and how mistaken are others. To bring our 
powers into self-consciousness immediately 
creates duty regarding them. This is the 
practical result of a wise self-knowledge, and 
explains why culture must begin with it as a 
method. It seeks to make us take an intelli- 
gent view of our various capacities, and so to 
give us a larger conception of the real oppor- 
tunities of life. A man who never looks within, 
and takes as his rule of conduct the accepted 
standards of his environment, can be very com- 
placent about his attainments. He can leave 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT II 

large tracts of his nature barren, hardly know- 
ing even that they exist. Thus we find many 
for whom whole worlds of thought and feeling 
are shut ; some to whom the things of intellect 
are a closed book, and others to whom the 
things of spirit are as in a land that is very 
far off. 

A true self-examination is necessary for in- 
tellectual progress, as well as for moral and 
spiritual growth. It need not be, and should 
not be, the morbid introspection which lowers 
the whole vitality and weakens effort. That 
ruins all healthy moral life. The minute search 
into every motive of an act produces a fertile 
crop of scruples, and results in a debilitated 
state of spiritual hypochondria. To watch for 
every sign of evil, questioning every feeling, 
tormenting oneself with every fear, is the way 
to induce some taint and to foster moral disease. 
It is so in the region of the physical. We have 
heard of the man who thought he was ill, and 
after reading a medical book concluded that he 
had every possible disease mentioned in the 
book. As he came to the description of each 
separate ailment, he felt all the symptoms and 
could locate the pain in every organ. The 



12 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

wonder was that he was alive at all with such 
a mass of aches and pains. Spiritual hypo- 
chondria can be produced in the same way, by 
a morbid self-scrutiny that will never let the 
soul alone, and will insist on recognising the 
taint in every thought and every motive. A 
complete and fearless self-examination is a good 
thing sometimes, perhaps even at stated in- 
tervals, but constant and minute introspection 
only saps the life of its power. 

At the same time, self-knowledge is a necessity 
if we are to have any consistent and wise culti- 
vation of our nature, Self-discipline in every 
sphere begins with self-consciousness, in the 
fearless scrutiny of both powers and limitations. 
The process is not complete until it is lost in 
self-forgetfulness, as the art which remains self- 
conscious never approaches perfection ; but that 
same art requires the long discipline in technique 
and mastery over the methods of work. Simi- 
larly, character must ultimately get past the self- 
conscious stage, though it too must begin by 
taking itself to pieces to give strenuous attention 
where it is needed. Thus the method of culture, 
in spite of the objections, justifies itself practi- 
cally ; for after all we arc only able to do things 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 13 

by sections because of our natural limitations. 
This explains the constant tendency of thought 
to divide our life into departments. It is 
necessary in practice and is right, provided we 
do not lose sight of the larger whole and re- 
member that no part can be its best without 
some complete and harmonious development. 

It has also to be admitted that the aim of self- 
culture, as usually stated, is not in itself a suffi- 
cient ideal, since its result is to concentrate all 
care and attention on oneself. It fails even of 
its own aim of complete development by neglect- 
ing the all-important fact, that man is a social 
being and can only come to his true self by 
taking his place in the common service of the 
community. No scheme which concerns itself 
solely with the individual can be a final one, and 
self-culture must never forget the strong tempta- 
tion which besets it to wrap itself up in a dis- 
guised selfishness. We can only obviate this by 
taking a broader view than is common of the 
sphere of culture itself, as this book seeks to do. 
To devote all consideration to the development 
of the intellect may be as essentially dwarfing as 
to devote it to the training of the body. We 
smile at the youth who spends much time com- 



14 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

placently measuring the increase of biceps or 
calf, and we pity the man who is always thinking 
of lungs or liver or nerves ; but the same sort of 
one-sided narrowness can be charged against the 
man who devotes all his attention to this or that 
mental function in the pious belief that he is 
growing up into a perfect culture. The funda- 
mental thesis with which we began of the unity 
of life should keep us right. It should show us 
the place which the element of social service 
must have as the groundwork even of our 
schemes of education. We do this in the 
chapter devoted to the culture of heart, as the 
very existence of such social feelings of sym- 
pathy and affection implies the duty of their 
exercise as truly as the existence of intellectual 
capacity demands opportunities for training. 

It is true that in a sense we are doing the best 
for others when we do the best for self, since we 
thus bring a richer contribution to the world's 
life. What we do ultimately depends on what 
we are ; and according to the depth and wealth 
of our own nature can our value to society be 
measured. Every highly trained capacity is a 
possible instrument of social service, and adds 
to the real possessions of the community. Still, 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 15 

any individual ideal which gives no definite and 
conscious place to the claims of society is fatally 
imperfect, and dooms itself to failure even in its 
own sphere. To be himself, a man must get out 
of himself. He must hold all he has for a larger 
purpose than any self-improvement. At the 
best, self-culture of all kinds is only like the 
polishing and sharpening of an instrument to 
make it serve for the best work. The completest 
knowledge and refinement of feeling are not for 
their own sake, any more than physical training 
is for its own sake. It would be but another 
kind of selfishness of a more subtle sort to make 
such an ideal. These are to be sought in order 
that we may be better qualified for the better 
service of life. It is well to remember that 
every gain carries a danger of corresponding loss, 
and that the very things of which culture should 
assure us are often occasions of a still more 
delicate temptation. Every new endowment 
brings a necessary possibility of its abuse. We 
are not therefore to shrink from them, but rather 
to grasp them with firmer hold, knowing the 
danger and making provision against it as com- 
pletely as possible. In dealing with the culture 
of each section of our nature it is the plan of 



16 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

this book to point oat how the exclusive train- 
ing of a power lays it open to the danger of 
loss. 

Within its own sphere, then, we must recognise 
the claims of a comprehensive scheme of self- 
culture, provided it be comprehensive enough. 
True physical health is reached, when all the 
organs are in their right condition of depend- 
ence and co-ordination, in a state of real har- 
mony. The larger health also is secured when 
the whole man is symmetrical, when all the ele- 
ments of his complex nature blend in the unity 
of life, when body and mind and heart and 
imagination and conscience and will find their 
legitimate scope, when intellect is cultivated with- 
out starving the emotions and affections, when 
the outward corresponds with the inward, when 
the complete life is reinforced not only by an 
enlightened mind and heart and conscience but 
also by the higher sanctions of religion. This 
training of a full and perfect man must be the 
aim of education. The great task of life lies in 
the harmonious unity of opposites. We need 
true proportional development, concurrent growth 
in the different directions open to us, physical, 
mental, moral, spiritual. The practical problem 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 17 

lies in what place to give each function, and 
how to combine them in the unity of character. 
It is no easy task, as we can imagine, for any 
one to cultivate the whole field of his life. There 
will be sure to be gaps, some portions overworked 
and some neglected. To a large extent it must 
remain an ideal to all of us, but an ideal is useful 
even when we know we cannot attain it. Indeed 
if we did attain, it would cease to be the Ideal. 
It is the experience of all that the firmer a man 
lays hold of an ideal, the more it eludes his grasp. 
As he grows in knowledge and insight and moral 
vision and spiritual attainment, his ideal likewise 
grows with a more unearthly beauty. Far vistas 
open up in the moral life as the seeker advances. 
In any case, even with the confessed failure to 
realise what the heart sees to be best, it is well to 
have seen the vision and to have followed after. 
Wordsworth, in a short preface to his great 
Ode to Duty, in which he had committed himself 
from that hour to the guidance of absolute duty, 
confesses that his wife and sister often twitted 
him with good reason for having forgotten this 
dedication of himself to the ' stern lawgiver.' 
There may be some comfort to weaker folk in 
the knowledge that even the man whose heart 
c 



18 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

burned and whose eye gleamed at the fair sight 
of a great ideal should be compelled to admit 
failure in the harder task of keeping the heights 
his soul was competent to gain. But whatever 
failure there may be and must be, who shall say 
that it was nothing that Wordsworth made his 
dedication to serve more strictly his ideal and to 
follow in the wake of a star ? 

We should encourage ourselves and each other 
to cherish high aims and to hold out before us 
great ends. One element of comfort is that we 
never know what undeveloped and even unsus- 
pected faculties lie dormant in us and in each 
other. In the education of the young, for in- 
stance, how often a new environment, the 
inspiration of a new teacher, the introduction of 
a new subject, the contact with a new thought, 
will give the life a changed bent and enlarge the 
whole vision. A student sometimes has gone 
through the whole conventional curriculum list- 
less and unawakened, till he came to a subject 
that gripped him, and the whole man grew and 
expanded in the light and heat, and all the pur- 
poses of life were transformed. 'What the eye 
never sees the heart never longs for,' is an Irish 
proverb with immense truth in this whole region 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 19 

of education. It enforces the importance of 
environment, the value of a rich and varied 
treatment of a child's dawning faculties, open- 
ing up possibilities in different lines till one day 
the soul may wake and grow. 

This is the reason why we cannot afford to 
neglect altogether any side of our nature, and 
why the different elements that go to the mak- 
ing of a true manhood and a perfect character 
deserve care and consideration. Artists tell us 
that nothing needs so many colours for its por- 
trayal as the human face, though to the outsider 
the mere colour would appear to be the least 
difficult thing in portraiture. Similarly, many 
and varied elements are needed for the pro- 
duction of a complete character and life. Many 
members and one body : many faculties and one 
personality. If we leave out of account at 
present the ways in which the bodily nature 
affects both mind and soul, and look merely at 
the higher reaches of our being, we must notice 
how varied the elements are that go to the 
making of a full human life, and how well 
balanced and harmonious they must be. Reason 
and emotion, faith and action, conscience to 
enlighten and will to initiate, are all needed. 



20 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Also, they must be in due proportion held in a 
rightful equipoise, thought and imagination and 
sympathy with full play for their activity without 
any one overshadowing the others — the sensibil- 
ity that does not weaken the intellect, the intellect 
that does not dwarf the affections, the affections 
that do not vitiate the conscience, the conscience 
that does not unnerve the will, the will that does 
not misdirect the moral action. 

Such an ideal may seem to impose on us a 
heavy load, but a deliberate and sustained 
approach to this is the task of life, and without 
dishonour we are not permitted to lay down the 
burden of being men. In a sense, however, it is 
not so hard as it looks ; for it is found in practice 
that it is in some ways easier to attain a many- 
sided development than an ill-proportioned one. 
The part is harder than the whole. One function 
helps another in the complete life ; one grace 
encourages and nourishes another. Excesses or 
deficiencies of one faculty are corrected by 
another. The faults of the head are put right by 
the virtues of the heart, whereas an exclusive 
attention to intellect will leave the defects of its 
quality untouched. The excesses of sentiment 
and sympathy are held in check by reason. 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 21 

The dangers of a morbid spiritualism are obvi- 
ated by an enlightened conscience and the moral 
duties it enforces. Thus, any half measure of 
culture is really further from the chance of suc- 
cess than the undivided whole. If we look care- 
fully we find that one power slides into another, 
and that no department is cut off from the rest 
with clear hard lines. 

We are very fond of dividing our life into 
departments, a tendency which has, as we have 
seen, a necessity in practice, but we need to be 
reminded of the underlying unity. We see this 
even in the theoretic division which is usually 
made in treating of the mind. The common 
division of the mental powers is into feeling, 
knowing, willing ; but while the distinction is a 
real one and can be truly and usefully made, it is 
only a distinction in function. The three states 
are never completely separated, but intermingle 
with each other. Every mental state contains 
something of each division, even although the 
preponderant element may be so great that we 
practically omit the other two elements and call 
one brain action a thought, another an emotion, 
another a volition. The highest thought is 



22 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

always suffused with emotion, and even the 
coldest and driest thinking has at least some 
colour of feeling — if it be only a prejudice against 
emotion in thought ! ' The light of the under- 
standing,' says Bacon, ' is not a dry or pure 
light, but receives a tincture from the will and 
affections.' On the other hand, an act of will 
is impossible without some of both the other 
ingredients. This fact of the inter-relation of 
knowing and feeling carries with it some practi- 
cal results that should influence our judgments 
more effectively than they are usually allowed to 
do. For one thing, it illustrates the narrowness 
of all attempts to make one of these qualities the 
supreme guide of life, as when reason is made 
the test of all things. Our vital faith, the practi- 
cal creed by which we live, is dependent on more 
than the tyranny of reason, and sometimes when 
there is a conflict between intellect and emotion 
the heart rightly speaks out in protest, as in 
Tennyson's lines: — 

If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
I heard a voice, ' Believe no more, 1 

A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath, the heart 

Stood up and answered, ' I have felt. 1 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 23 

There can be no schism between these essen- 
tial powers without loss to all. Feeling, thought, 
and will act and re-act on each other ceaselessly. 
In our commonest experiences we know how 
intimate the connection is, when a train of 
thinking is started by some feeling, and a 
decision is reached as a result. How often if 
we analyse some experience we will find that 
an emotion begat the thought, and the thought 
blossomed into a determination. There can be 
no real and effective willing without both some 
feeling and some thinking. And on the other 
hand the will can discipline both emotion and 
thought, can often determine what we shall feel 
and think, can choose among various courses of 
feeling and thinking, reject certain natural lines 
of reflection and deliberately encourage other 
classes of thought. That is why the will plays 
such a large part in moral life, and why it is 
important in any scheme of culture. A man can 
determine to some extent what thoughts and 
feelings and imaginations he will harbour in 
his mind, and to which he gives ready hospi- 
tality. It is perhaps this power of will which 
distinguishes men most ; for intellectually con- 
centration of mind depends on it, and morally 



24 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

often the whole character of a man's inward life. 
The highest intellectual life will be where these 
related powers are in harmony, where the 
emotions are not starved by the reason, where 
feeling is not permitted to distemper the mind, 
and where the will is not atrophied by want of 
use. The heart must be allowed to testify 
boldly, if need be, against 'the freezing reason's 
colder part.' What we feel is as true a fact 
as what we think. To omit this fundamental 
place of emotion, as so many do in making 
judgments about religion, is to vitiate their 
conclusions. 

In other and broader ways we often look upon 
ourselves as a bundle of qualities unrelated to 
each other in any vital fashion, and give too 
little thought to the unity of character which 
should be our ideal. This sense of disunion is 
probably a necessary stage in education, and 
certainly it is encouraged by the various forces 
that act upon us in creating our moral char- 
acter. We can hardly help feeling as if our 
moral life were in detached fragments ; for we 
are the fruit of many social influences differ- 
ing vastly in their effects and in their method 
of working. We speak of the organic nature 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 25 

of society moulding men and producing moral 
results which in their sum we call character; 
but society is not one invariable force even 
though we rightly enough call it an organism. 
In the region of personality and moral life all 
our analogies from the natural world are only 
figures of speech, to be interpreted with a large 
margin of exception and correction. An or- 
ganism in the animal or vegetable kingdom is 
a body constituted of various essential and inter- 
dependent organs, and while it is true that in a 
large view society shows an organic structure 
built up by an indwelling principle of life in the 
body politic, yet it must be remembered that 
we cannot define the social organism completely 
in terms of physiology. In this sphere of moral 
character we are bound to blunder if we assume 
that society contains a complete and perfect 
ethical unity. The fact is that society, though 
spoken of in the large as one definite and dis- 
tinct environment, is composed for all of us 
of various ingredients all seeming to work 
blindly. When we say that the forces of society 
play upon us, we must not forget how different 
these forces are in their nature. They can only 
be worked up into unity in the unity of our own 



26 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

life, and this is why an intelligent and compre- 
hensive scheme of self-culture is needed. 

Society, for instance, comprises to us such 
different influences as the family, the Church, 
the civic conditions, the industrial relations so 
different in different trades and professions. 
Even if the home life for all were one consistent 
influence about which we could speak as of one 
colour — as, alas! we cannot — there would still 
be the great variety introduced by the other 
component parts of society. The best home 
life presents a type of moral education hugely 
different from the influences of our ordinary 
work, which also is expected to be a moral 
education. A young man beginning life finds 
it hard to relate the two standards to each other. 
We cannot be surprised if the various social 
forces now overlap and now leave gaps in the 
production of a complete moral character; and 
we cannot be surprised if in our own experience 
we are troubled by a haunting sense of disunion 
within, as though we were made up of unrelated 
virtues and faults. The standard of the family 
and that of the Church speak with such different 
voices from the standard, say, in our commercial 
or our political life. Yet we feel sure that there 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 27 

should be no real division, but that our character 
should be built up in consistency and in unity. 

In a very real sense this is indeed so in spite 
of appearances. A man's life creates in him a 
distinct character which is compounded of all 
that he is. We come to feel that there is a root 
principle, which unifies all his varied experience 
and gives one colour and tone to his life. In 
our practical judgment of men we accept this. 
We may be wrong in our judgment, but that 
does not destroy the fact ; it only shows that 
from want of adequate data we have made a 
mistake. When we know a man thoroughly, 
his strong and weak points, his virtues and fail- 
ings, we are able to sum up what we conceive 
to be his character. Much nonsense is talked 
about the dual nature of man, as if he were two 
or more persons living within the one tenement 
of the body, a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, now 
one and now the other, now kind and now cruel, 
now high-minded and now base. The truth of 
this crude statement of life is of course obvious. 
It is to say that character is complex, as it must 
be when acted on by such various forces as we 
have seen. Good in a man has often a very 
unstable equilibrium, and evil is not enthroned in 



28 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

unchallengeable power. We see the strangest 
mixture of qualities in a single man, and the 
strangest mixture of motives in a single act. 
There is a soul of good in things evil, and evil 
clings to the skirts of good. Still, there is a 
real unity of character which is in process of 
growing in every man. It is only in the making, 
but its dominant features are ceaselessly shaping 
the whole. The two seemingly opposite features 
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are due often to 
the one root of character. They may be both 
the fruit of selfishness — now kind and cruel, 
generous and mean, according to circumstances. 
The variety has a deep underlying unity of 
disposition at its base. 

This suggests another common way in which 
we introduce division into our life, by cutting it 
into sections which we label sacred and secular. 
It is an even more artificial division, but it has 
perhaps with most of us far more practical 
effects. We know from experience how per- 
nicious it may be in life, and how demoralising 
to religion. We cannot divide our life thus into 
air-tight compartments, as if what is in one bit 
could have no dealings with what is in another, 
as if the sacred side of us had nothing to say to 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 29 

the secular side, and the secular can be kept 
from influencing the sacred. It is a vain dream. 
Our character is all of a piece, and the value of 
our life must some time or other get down to 
one common denominator. We cannot cut off 
a little section and label it sacred, hedging it 
round from the contamination of secular things. 
If the sacred is not elevating and inspiring the 
secular, the secular will assuredly drag the other 
down to its own level. 

Without entering more fully into these com- 
mon devices we have of creating disunion within 
ourselves — the common division we make 
between body and mind to be treated in the 
next chapter, the division between different 
functions of the mind itself, the practical division 
of life into sacred and secular — the great question 
we have to face is how we are to arrive at real 
unity, how to reconcile all the diverse parts of 
our complex life and stand complete without 
any schism in the life. There is no swift and 
easy cure-all that can be used like a quack 
medicine. It can only be done by a process of 
unification, and the process must be a religious 
one. There is no other power can do it. Deep 



30 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

and sacred sanctions of duty must pervade and 
inspire the practical scheme of self-culture we 
choose. It is certainly the religious task to 
bring every power and thought and faculty into 
relation to religion. We cannot let go any 
department of our nature as of no account, 
without suffering loss. 

Faith needs reason to stiffen it and protect it, 
as zeal needs knowledge to steady it and direct 
it. The intellectual faculties have to be re- 
deemed from waste and failure as well as the 
other parts of our being. When they are so 
reclaimed and taken into the service of the 
highest, the intellectual enriches the whole life 
of faith. To leave out reason as if religion had 
no concern with it is to make an irreparable 
breach in the life, and is as foolish as if the eye 
said to the hand, I have no need of thee. We 
hold our faith by a very insecure tenure if we 
refuse to bring our understanding to bear on it. 
The apostolic counsel is certainly safer and 
wiser, to be ready to give to every man a reason 
for the hope that is in us. In the course of a 
high argument the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews stops to complain of the slowness and 
dulness of apprehension of his readers, which 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 31 

makes it difficult for him to go on with the higher 
teaching. He cannot explore the profounder 
reaches of truth, he tells them, because they have 
not made themselves fit to follow him. When 
he comes to speak of such deep things, it is as if 
they had suddenly become dull of hearing, and 
could not understand his speech. They have 
remained children content with the rudiments of 
truth, content to live on milk diet so that they 
cannot take the solid food he is prepared to give 
them. And yet, he contends, they ought to have 
grown up and gone on developing, and should 
indeed have been in a position to be teachers 
themselves. If they had exercised their powers 
they would not now be placidly accepting spoon- 
meat like children, but would have been full- 
grown men to whom solid food was natural. 

If growth in knowledge and the development 
of intellect are necessary to understand in a 
progressive degree spiritual truth, no less needful 
is the cultivation of the higher emotions. As 
we have seen, this is true even in the sphere 
of ordinary thought. Herbert Spencer in the 
Preface to his Autobiography declares that he 
has shown by his book that in the genesis of a 
system of thought the emotional nature is 



32 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual 
nature. Spencer showed this rather negatively 
than otherwise ; for one of the prominent marks 
of his life seems to be that he held his emotional 
nature in perpetual restraint. The sentiments 
that appealed to him were usually the most 
abstract, with little blood in their veins. But 
there is a sense in which the remark is true even 
of his own work, almost exclusively intellectual 
as it appears. If true there, it is a hundredfold 
truer in the range of common human life. The 
region of feeling lies specially near to religion 
and cannot be overlooked. The life of the heart 
is what makes up the individuality of each of us 
more than even our distinctive intellectual powers. 
Religion shows her dominant power just here 
amid the affections and sympathies. Religion 
bends and shapes the life at the points where 
feeling flames. 

In the same way it can be shown that religion 
demands the cultivation of imagination, and 
conscience, and will, and every power and faculty 
which man possesses. There are many capaci- 
ties but the one life, and each faculty is needed 
to make up the perfect unity. The truest 
religion inspires the cultivation of intellect and 



PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 33 

all the higher emotions, and is itself in turn re- 
inforced by their training. Lasting injury is 
done to character when one of the elements is 
neglected. Thus the proportional development, 
which the best culture asks for, is also sanc- 
tioned, and even required, by religion. 

Many who go with us thus far and assent to 
all this as a fair ideal for the life of man do not 
see the further implication of their position which 
relates to the place of religion itself, the place of 
the soul, and the innate demand for spiritual 
culture. If man has a life towards the things 
below him, he has a life also towards the things 
above him. Only when he fulfils the true end 
of his being in that higher life does man truly 
live. With satiated desire, gratified ambition, 
intellectual attainment, it is a cramped and 
narrow life with already the gnawing of the 
worm in it, if there be in it no fellowship with 
the divine, none of the faith and hope and love 
of religion. There is a deadly schism in the life ; 
all our best powers have broken, ragged edges to 
them, if they are not carried forward and upward 
into the life of God. The depth and richness of 
a complete nature are lacking without this higher 
culture. There can be no true proportional 



34 PROPORTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

development, no true balance of power, no true 
harmony of gift, until they are all submitted in 
humility and gratitude and loving service to their 
Giver, who reconciles all the varied capacities 
and divergent powers of our human nature into 
one consistent whole. 



CULTURE OF BODY 



' Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body 
and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of 
the belief that the preservation of health is a duty? 

— Herbert Spencer. 



CHAPTER II 

CULTURE OF BODY 

nr^HE common division of man naturally begins 
-*- with the body, the physical basis of life. Its 
claim to full culture is one which we must make 
willingly and gladly, realising the immense part 
it plays in every region. To neglect duty here is 
to take away from efficiency everywhere. Any 
serious derangement of the physical nature 
maims and distorts every higher function. The 
Greeks made physical training a science, one of 
the necessary parts of their scheme of education. 
The Gymnasium was one of the great centres of 
a city's life, where especially all the young men 
gathered. That is why philosophers and teachers 
frequented them, as they easily and naturally 
found an audience there. There were three great 
gymnasia in Athens famous to us, because in one 
of them Plato taught and Aristotle in another. 
By their muscular development and their careful 

37 



38 CULTURE OF BODY 

bodily training, the Greek ideal of beauty and 
dignity and proportion in the human figure 
remains as one of the great glories of art. We 
may sometimes think that the cult of athletics is 
in danger of being carried too far among us, but 
it is nothing compared to the practice of the 
Greeks. To them it was almost a half of human 
education. Every town had its gymnasium, its 
baths, its racing-track, on a scale hardly con- 
ceivable by us. Training of the body was set 
about on scientific principles, not haphazardly as 
sports for the pastime of children or as exhibi- 
tions for the amusement of spectators. Philoso- 
phers gravely reasoned out the due proportion 
which athletic development should have in the 
ideal education. Even Plato in his scheme of 
education sets apart exclusively for * gymnastic' 
the years of a young man's life which seem to 
us the most essential for establishing moral 
character and intellectual pursuits — those be- 
tween seventeen and twenty. It was because 
he took long views of life that he was willing to 
make this sacrifice of these most precious years. 
He believed that it would pay afterwards both 
morally and intellectually. 

The many references, casual though they are, 



CULTURE OF BODY 39 

scattered through the New Testament itself give 
us some indication of the place the gymnastic art 
held in Greek life. The New Testament never 
throws contempt on the body, but recommends a 
wise and sane treatment of it, and even when 
advocating a higher kind of discipline does not 
denounce bodily training. It has its uses, it 
asserts, though these can only be partial, having 
reference only to one department of a man's 
nature. All who saw the results could not but 
admire the perfection of strength and beauty and 
health which was the result of the classic training. 
St. Paul more than once points the lesson of self- 
discipline by a reference to the Isthmian games, 
the great festival of Greece. Every competitor 
at these great contests, every one who entered 
for a race or for a boxing-match, did so after 
the most careful training and the most stringent 
discipline. ' Every man that striveth for the 
mastery is temperate in all things,' says the 
Apostle, asking from his readers for something 
of the same eager interest and willing sacrifice 
in the higher race and the nobler fight of life. 
The training was very severe, and was entered on 
ten months before the contest. Epictetus gives 
the rules for the training of an athlete : ' Thou 



40 CULTURE OF BODY 

must be orderly, living on spare food, abstain 
from confections, make a point of exercising at 
the appointed time in heat and in cold, nor drink 
cold water, nor wine at hazard. In a word, give 
thyself up to thy training-master as to a 
physician, and then enter on the contest.' No 
serious competitor could afford to be self- 
indulgent, and so the training naturally suggested 
metaphors for self-mastery, the taming of the 
evil within and harnessing the powers of life to 
good. 

The Greek passion for gymnastic, or what we 
would call athletics, finds some justification from 
the facts of life. What the precise connection is 
between the body and the higher life we need 
not try to discover, whether in the ultimate issue 
character depends on the physical nature, or 
whether the body is the expression of the soul. 
For a true sense of duty, all we need to know is 
that the connection is of the closest, between the 
higher life of intellect and morals and spirit on 
the one side, and on the other what we are 
accustomed to think the lower life of the body. 
We need not accept entirely the fanciful idea of 
some philosophers and poets, as in Spenser's 
beautiful lines, 



CULTURE OF BODY 41 

For every spirit as it is most pure, 
And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight ; 
For of the soul the body form doth take ; 
For soul is form, and doth the body make. 

The relation at least is one that cannot be 
severed, and to try to solve the problem as to 
which comes first is like the ancient conundrum 
which Plutarch tells us philosophers discussed, as 
to whether the hen or the egg came first. For 
practical purposes, all we need to know is that 
there is a real and vital connection between the 
hen and the egg. 

Montaigne comes nearer the practical, though 
some may think that even he is a little fanciful 
in putting the cart before the horse, when he 
says, ' The soul that entertains philosophy ought 
to be of such a constitution of health as to render 
the body in like manner healthful too ; she ought 
to make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so 
as to appear without, and her contentment ought 
to fashion the outward behaviour to her own 
mould and consequently to fortify it with a 
graceful confidence, an active carriage, and a 
serene and contented countenance. The most 



42 CULTURE OF BODY 

manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerful- 
ness.' 1 We do not need to subscribe to what 
is called the religion of healthy-mindedness in 
order to admit freely the great and common 
truth which it emphasises. If courage and hope 
and trust have a conquering efficacy over some 
bodily ailments and over some nervous states of 
mind, while doubt and fear reduce vitality, we 
know even more certainly the converse side that 
states of body influence the higher life in all its 
activities. The common man's philosophy is 
usually the fruit of his physical temperament. 
Most optimisms can be traced to a good 
digestion, and most pessimisms to dyspepsia. 

It influences art and literature in ways too 
subtle always to discover. A very observant 
doctor mentioned as an interesting fact that the 
writers of the vulgar and brutal fiction of our 
day are all in bad health. He spoke from know- 
ledge of some of them, and perhaps he was not 
far wrong in his diagnosis of all. Certainly one 
might argue from the unhealthiness of mind to at 
least bad habits of body. The greatest writers 
impress us with a sense of the healthy vigour and 
sanity of their mind. With them we are in a 

1 Essay, The Education of Children. 



CULTURE OF BODY 43 

large world, under wide skies, and amid whole- 
some life. There is no feeling of depressed 
vitality about them or their work. The morbid 
and diseased and the tragic side of the world 
have their place in their interpretation of human 
life, but always in the natural proportion and 
from the point of view that health is the normal. 
Clear vision, and keen insight, and true feeling, 
and productive energy in all forms of art depend 
on conditions of health of body and mind and 
soul. Disease of all sorts reduces vital force, 
distorts the perspective, and takes away from the 
power of working. When it invades the sanc- 
tuary of the soul it ruins the qualities that go to 
produce great art. As a fact on the other side 
in this connection, Emerson in his classification 
of the different kinds of eloquence has one 
which he calls animal eloquence, the first quality 
of which is a certain robust and radiant physical 
health, and produces its effects by its great 
volumes of animal heat. It is true that many a 
man with weak lungs and frail stature has made 
his mark in oratory through the inward flame 
that triumphed over the physical weakness, but 
it has been done at great cost and under severe 
handicap. 



44 CULTURE OF BODY 

We cannot fail to see that the connection 
between body and mind is a very close one, and 
when we note how the one affects the other we 
must admit that health is a moral duty. The 
value of health for happiness is perhaps only 
fully appreciated by those who have lost it. We 
have all known some to whom the finest gifts of 
fortune were made bitter and valueless through 
physical weakness. There is, of course, the con- 
verse truth that some bodily ailments have their 
origin in the mind, and sometimes if physicians 
could minister to a mind diseased, they could cure 
their patients easily ; but this fact must not make 
us careless of the equal truth, that depressed bodily 
functions mean depressed mental functions, and 
that the man likely to be happy and to live a 
sane, wholesome life is the healthy man. The 
connection between health and happiness is a 
commonplace ; at least we easily admit that 
pain and constant bad health will counterbalance 
almost any possible gifts of fortune. Carlyle in 
his Rectorial Address to the students of the 
Edinburgh University put this in weighty words : 
' Finally, I have one advice to give you which is 
practically of very great importance. You are to 
consider throughout much more than is done at 



CULTURE OF BODY 45 

present, and what would have been a very great 
thing for me if I had been able to consider, that 
health is a thing to be attended to continually, 
that you are to regard it as the very highest of 
all temporal things. There is no kind of achieve- 
ment you could make in the world that is equal 
to perfect health. What to it are nuggets or 
millions ? ' 

The duty of a wise care for health is bigger 
than merely adding an important asset for per- 
sonal happiness. To a large extent it deter- 
mines the efficiency of our lives. Its results are 
seen all along the line, giving a bias to our views, 
and affecting our capacity to work and the quality 
of our work. Students especially sometimes 
forget that the brain can be overtaxed, and like 
an overbent bow may never quite recover from 
the strain. It often demands from the student 
great control, and what looks like sacrifice, for 
him to rigorously follow the rules of health, such 
as attention to diet and sleep and exercise. He 
is not interested in physical exercise, and can get 
up no sort of enthusiasm for games and has none 
of the sportsman's instinct, while he is intensely 
interested in his intellectual pursuits. He is 
absorbed in great studies, the passion of high 



46 CULTURE OF BODY 

thought is upon him, and noble ambitions kindle 
in his mind. Yet even for the sake of his work 
in the long run he cannot break these common 
laws with impunity. Many a man learns after it 
is too late that he would have been fit for better 
and more work, if he had always preserved the 
sane and sensible bearing towards the laws of 
health and life which experience teaches. We 
have a proverb which says that a man at forty 
will be either a fool or a physician, with the evi- 
dent thought that by that time he ought to have 
learned the simple elementary rules of health. 
The trouble is that then it is often too late, or at 
least mischief is done which hampers a man all 
his life. No one in these days has any excuse 
for ignorance of the common practical rules of 
health. There are many popular medical books 
on the subject, such as the primers published by 
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 
Health Scries. Herbert Spencer deals with 
the subject in connection with children in his 
Education, and there are various manuals of 
hygiene which give much good practical advice 
on the management of the body. 

Napoleon in one of his letters quoted 
Fontenelle's saying that the two great qualities 



CULTURE OF BODY 47 

necessary to live long were a good body and a 
bad heart, the sort of cynical remark which 
appeals to the coarse-grained man who makes an 
idol of mere success and defines success in terms 
of selfishness. We can extract the sting out of 
the saying and accept the manifest truth it con- 
tains, namely, that health is a condition of real 
efficiency, enabling a man to do his work and ex- 
pend himself freely in the various lines in which 
his energy runs. We see at once that any work 
which requires delicacy of touch or accuracy of 
calculation or even special energy needs a basis 
of health. In general life, commercial, political, 
social, the qualities most prized of initiative and 
enterprise and resourcefulness, all indeed that we 
sum up under the head of practical capacity, have 
their roots in health and strength. ' For perform- 
ance of great mark it needs bodily health,' says 
Emerson. * Sickness is poor-spirited and cannot 
serve any one ; it must husband its resources to 
live.' 

To say that health is a condition of a man's 
efficiency is more than to say that it will probably 
lead to success in his business. It should help to 
make him a man of a more all-round character, 
since character is formed, as Goethe says, in the 



48 CULTURE OF BODY 

stream of the world. Of course there have been 
exceptions. Many men have done magnificent 
work who have been handicapped by a delicate 
constitution, but they would be the first to admit 
that it has been a handicap. They could not 
enter the race on fair terms. It is worth while 
remembering the exceptions, if only for the sake 
of those who know that they are not like Samson 
for strength, and who may have to contend 
against much weakness. Even here, wise care 
will enable one to get through much work, and 
will even build up a fairly comfortable margin of 
strength. Gibbon, who had very weak health in 
youth, tells us in his Memoirs that his constitu- 
tion was so feeble and his life so precarious that 
in the baptism of each of his brothers his father's 
prudence successively repeated the Christian 
name of Edward, that in the case of the departure 
of the eldest son this name might be still per- 
petuated in the family. Till he was nearly six- 
teen he was a most delicate boy, but thereafter 
his constitution became fortified, and all the world 
knows how much he was enabled to perform in his 
life, largely because, as he says, he never possessed 
or abused the insolence of health. Something of 
the same is true of Julius Caesar, of Calvin, and of 



CULTURE OF BODY 49 

many other great men who triumphed over much 
weakness of body. It is proof of the supremacy 
of the soul that the sick body can sometimes 
be made to do its bidding. But even if the sick- 
ness does not bring some taint of the morbid or 
perverse, that bidding would be done more easily 
and perfectly under conditions of health. 

Charles Kingsley with his healthy body and 
sane mind taught his generation a useful lesson 
to treat the physical side of life wisely and 
reasonably. He himself attributed part of his 
success at Eversley to the natural and easy way 
he could be all things to all men — could swing a 
flail with the threshers in a barn, turn his swathe 
with the mowers in a meadow, pitch hay with 
the haymakers in the pasture, as well as show 
sympathy with all manly sports. In a letter 
from Eversley he declares that there has always 
seemed to him something impious in the neglect 
of personal health, strength, and beauty, which 
some religious people of his day affected. 'I 
could not do half the little good I do here if it 
were not for that strength and activity which 
some consider coarse and degrading. How 
merciful God has been in turning all the strength 
and hardihood I gained in snipe-shooting and 



50 CULTURE OF BODY 

hunting, and rowing, and jack-fishing in those 
magnificent fens to His work.' 

Apart from efficiency in work, mental and 
moral qualities are affected when the state of 
the body is abnormal. As on the one hand 
self-indulgence produces slackness of fibre both 
physical and mental, so bodily states influence 
our higher capacities and colour our views. 
Moral qualities cannot be dissociated from 
physical results. The most intellectual life, or 
the most spiritual life, proceeds upon a physical 
basis. In a word, life is a unity ; and if the 
materialist makes a fatal error in leaving soul 
out of account, so the spiritualist makes a fatal 
error if he leaves body out of account. * Conceit 
in weakest bodies strongest works/ says Shake- 
speare. Morbid or capricious judgments about 
things are more likely to be had from the men of 
irritable nerves, than from the robust and whole- 
some nature. Not that all deep-chested and 
strong men must be models of wisdom, nor that 
any who cannot come up to the standard of a 
health inspector can have no chance to become 
wise. Here too there have been many exceptions 
on both sides. Pascal was always a weakling, 
and even made himself more so by his religious 



CULTURE OF BODY 51 

austerities ; and to many a man pain has been 
a school of the profoundest wisdom. We must 
remember that it is always easy to overrate the 
physical. It is the first thing we note and the one 
thing we can easily mark. Some of the noblest 
men have been among the class of invalids. 
Some of the finest specimens physically have 
been among the meanest and basest. Sympathy, 
tenderness, and insight have come to many a 
man through suffering ; and nothing is so irri- 
tating as the easy and joyous platitudes of the 
deep-chested type who have never known any 
sort of pain or tribulation. Many a man has 
been able to say with the Psalmist, 'It is good 
for me that I have been afflicted that I might 
learn Thy statutes.' 

At the same time, speaking in general terms 
on this subject, we must stand for a sane and 
wholesome physical nature as the ideal, from 
which at least to expect a well-developed 
character. The old adage is a true one, Mens 
sana in corpore sano. The highest functions of 
life can only be adequately performed in health. 
Perhaps there never was more necessity for the 
enforcement of this truth than to-day, when such 
multitudes live in cities, and when so much 



52 CULTURE OF BODY 

of our work is of a sedentary or confining 
character. The ever-increasing demands of in- 
dustry make a drain on all the resources of our 
life, and ask for complete fitness not only in 
body and mind, but also in the subtler region of 
character, and we cannot afford to neglect any 
element that makes for efficiency. 

This is often treated as if there were some sort 
of degradation in admitting that so much of the 
higher reaches of life depend on such trivial 
things as exercise and the right management of 
the body generally. Rather, we should take it 
as an evidence of the sacredness of all parts of 
our nature. If we are wise we will accept the 
fact of the relation of body to the highest life, 
and will treat it accordingly. It will help us to 
solve some of the practical problems we all meet 
in the conduct of life — the whole question of re- 
creation and amusement, for example. 

Some sort of recreation is necessary in the 
interests not merely of the body itself but of the 
whole man. The bow must be unstrung if it is 
to retain its elasticity. For the mind's own sake 
there must be diversion, and while variety of 
mental work itself gives some diversion, yet the 
most complete recreation for all whose work is 



CULTURE OF BODY 53 

sedentary and intellectual is some form of physical 
exercise. Per contra , the best recreation to those 
whose work is largely manual consists in some 
intellectual pursuit. Not only is it the best, but 
it is absolutely necessary if a man is to retain 
the highest qualities of his manhood. The most 
effective recreation is certainly that which is in 
contrast to our regular employment. Every one 
will admit that a moderate amount of exercise in 
the open air is good for body and mind. The 
encouragement of athletics given to-day in 
schools, by the press, and by the whole tone of 
public opinion, is in some respects a good sign of 
the times. We may have grave doubts about the 
'cult of the arena,' where thousands of people 
crowd together round a field to watch a select 
number of professionals perform in a game ; 
though even that is not to be indiscriminately 
condemned, as there are many more unhealthy 
ways in which masses of our young men could 
spend some of their leisure time. Outdoor pur- 
suits and open-air sports have their legitimate 
place and do something to preserve the national 
efficiency we hear so much about. Physical 
exercise and fresh air will increase and preserve 
the health and happiness of our town populations. 



54 CULTURE OF BODY 

A man who is physically fit is surely all the 
better citizen. No sensible man would like to 
reduce the opportunities in this line open to our 
clerks and artisans. 

We are coming even to see how qualities that 
may be classed as moral may be encouraged in 
children by their very games. The most popular 
games for boys have been recognized as doing 
more than giving opportunities for health. They 
teach lessons that may well be called moral, self- 
reliance and yet self-restraint, good temper in de- 
feat and moderation in victory, steady resolution, 
and the value of combination. The perseverance 
and energy and generosity which games can 
teach boys make no small contribution to their 
training for life. The value of drill to boys is 
something more than the mere physical training 
received by it. It is calculated to awaken a sense 
of comradeship, and with it a subordination to the 
good of others. It teaches habits of self-control 
and thoroughness and exactness, and helps to root 
out the inborn tendency of what Rudyard Kipling 
calls 'doing things rather more or less.' 

This ideal of physical culture is a far-reaching 
principle, which should have great results both 
for the personal and for the social life. It is at 



CULTURE OF BODY 55 

the basis of all education, and the sooner and the 
more completely we recognise this, the better will 
it be for our social conditions. The rules for the 
care of children are in a sense well enough known, 
but the observance of them is not in keeping with 
our knowledge. They are — plenty of good air, 
simple food, suitable clothing according to the sea- 
son, and enough exercise. The most important of 
these, because it is the one most neglected, is the 
first, which really in a, sense includes the last. 
The way in which otherwise sensible people 
poison children by stuffy houses and musty 
schools is past speech. How can we expect 
children to be bright of intellect in deadly school- 
rooms full of impure air ? With a little more 
wisdom also the demands of education could be 
made to harmonise better with a child's physical 
fitness, taking care that the nervous system is 
not exhausted ; and better methods of education 
could be introduced, with less cramming and 
other stupid ways in which vanity encourages 
infant precocity. If parents and teachers fully 
realise how mental states are affected by physical 
health, there will be less of the unreasonable 
chastisement, which made Rousseau say when 
writing about it after fifty years that the memory 



56 CULTURE OF BODY 

made his pulse quicken still. This ideal of 
physical culture must take a larger place in 
all legislation, and through it the standard of 
health for the community will be raised. It will 
mean an increased importance to be attached 
to the physical well-being of all the people, in 
conditions of labour, in housing of the working 
classes, in facilities for recreation, in opportunities 
for leisure. 

At the same time, while we gladly admit the 
importance of all this side of life, we must take 
care that athletics do not take an undue place, 
as if they were an end in themselves and not 
just a means to something larger. The mere 
idolatry of muscle that is so common in many 
quarters is anything but a good sign of the 
times, and is of a piece with the view of life 
which eliminates the spiritual. One must 
make allowance for the boyish crazes which 
pass over a community, when every youth 
spends long time solemnly examining his 
biceps : and one must also make allowance for 
the youthful enthusiasm which makes a hero 
of the captain of the football team — and very 
often he is a hero in school life. But the 



CULTURE OF BODY 57 

danger to which we refer has much more wide- 
spread roots than that. A considerable section 
of our people is taken up with sports and games. 
These seem to be the first thing in their lives. 
Bodily exercise is made to profit everything ; 
and if you take that away there is practically 
nothing left. The things of the intellect and 
the things of the soul have little or no place ; 
and even the things of ordinary business suffer. 
At least employers sometimes say that with 
some of their young men, the one important 
thing is their sport — football, or baseball, or golf. 
From what has preceded in this chapter, it will 
be understood that nothing here is written with 
sour and narrow prejudices, which would con- 
demn such innocent and even necessary recrea- 
tion. But it is a poor life which has no deeper 
and higher concern. If we get the right per- 
spective, bodily exercise will fall into its true 
and legitimate place. Its place is to give a 
perfect instrument for the play of our higher 
energies. It was never meant that a man with 
all his Godlike endowments should spend all on 
the outside of life, with no interests above the 
body and the things of the body. The mere 
athlete, however highly trained, is an incom- 



58 CULTURE OF BODY 

plete person. Said Epictetus, * It is a sign of a 
nature not finely tempered to give yourself up to 
things which relate to the body ; to make a great 
fuss about exercise, about eating, about drinking, 
about walking, about riding. All these things 
ought to be done by the way ; the formation of 
the spirit and character must be our real con- 
cern.' 2 Some of us make a great fuss about 
such things, and have no time or thought for 
anything else. Bodily exercise does profit for 
some things, but it has its limits, and the limits 
are soon reached. 

In itself it cannot even save the physical life ; 
for our nature is a unity, and each part suffers 
from loss elsewhere. If it is true that a healthy 
body influences mind and soul for good, it is 
also true that a healthy mind has its good effect 
on the very body. Goodness is profitable for 
all things, for the body as for the soul, for the 
life that now is as well as for the life that is to 
come. This is no theory merely, but a well- 
established fact of experience. A happy mood 
of mind, a sweet and simple piety, a generous 
desire to help and serve others, will encourage 
and strengthen health in ourselves. Faith re- 

1 v. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, chap. I. 



CULTURE OF BODY 59 

news youth like the eagle. The merry heart 
maketh a cheerful countenance. Peace of mind, 
a good conscience, a gentle, generous, unselfish 
heart are all great elements of health, just as 
anger and excessive grief and hatred tend to 
destroy vitality. If we would be true and com- 
plete men, we must have another sort of exercise 
in addition to any physical training. Plato, who 
made so much of the necessity of bodily training, 
says, ' Excessive care of body beyond the rules 
of gymnastic is most inimical to the practice 
of virtue,' and after all, his interest in the one 
was because of his concern for the other. We 
must consider more than health, if we would 
fulfil the end of our being. We must aim at 
true proportional development, which will some- 
times demand the good of the whole, even at 
some self-sacrifice in the region of the physical. 
We must exercise the higher part of our nature, 
and most of all must give scope to the highest 
part of all. There is a gymnastic which must 
take precedence. Noble and virtuous life — 
not bodily development, nor even mental culture 
by itself, nor happiness — is our being's end 
and aim. Without this we are stunted and 
dwarfed, never attaining what we ought to 



60 CULTURE OF BODY 

become, never approaching the stature of the 
perfect man. No development in the lower 
reaches of life can make up for failure in the 
higher. Bodily exercise cannot profit for every- 
thing, and can at the best profit only for a little. 
By itself it leaves a man one-sided and distorted. 
Its true place is to cultivate the body as an instru- 
ment for a complete character. Even when we 
follow after lower things and give our hearts 
to unworthy aims, we know that goodness alone 
counts : we know that the men and women who 
truly succeed in life, are those who succeed here. 
However much we may be spending our strength 
for that which profiteth not, we know in our heart 
of hearts that goodness alone is profitable for all 
things and for all worlds. 

The right view of this subject will only be 
reached by laying firm hold of the principle 
which runs through this book, of the unity of 
the personal life. The body must be treated as 
an integral part of human nature, not as a foe 
to all that is best in man, a foe to be buffeted 
and kept under. The true relation of the body 
to the higher life of mind and soul is not one of 
mutual antagonism. To think of man as pure 



CULTURE OF BODY 61 

spirit, even in theory, is folly, and leads to endless 
error. Even the abstract separation of spiritual 
and material can serve no useful purpose, and 
must always incur some serious dangers. It is 
futile to regard the bodily functions as something 
quite apart from the mental functions, as it is 
futile to speak of our personality as if it had no 
intimate connection with the body. We have large 
evidence of the inter-relation of mind and body, 
the reaction on each other of moral and physical 
states. This close connection is admitted, though 
even now we do not give it its full weight in 
affecting conduct. Though we may make distinc- 
tions in our nature for convenience of speech, yet 
these distinctions are largely artificial. We can- 
not cut up the being of man in sections, as if 
there could be an intellectual life that had no basis 
in the physical, or as if there could be a life of the 
soul with no relation to the life in the flesh. 

If we have such a conception of unity in our 
nature, it follows that we can leave no part of 
man outside our consideration, as if it did not 
count. Education is seen to be more than a mere 
brain development ; it is the total forming of a 
human being, physical, intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual. It is, no doubt, sometimes humiliating 



62 CULTURE OF BODY 

to us to feel how much we are affected by our 
physical state. It makes us almost despise our- 
selves, bound as we seem to be to the body of 
this death. But for good or ill it is so. All 
divisions of man's nature must be confessedly 
inexact. All talk about religion being of the 
soul, and sin having its seat in the body, is false. 
The body in itself is morally neutral and colour- 
less. All sins of the flesh are sins of the soul. 
We may locate the manifestation, but the evil is 
deeper than the surface. To parcel out the 
nature of man in the common way, to separate 
the body from the soul except in a popular and 
general fashion, invariably ends in error accord- 
ing to which side the stress is laid. 

On the one side it becomes rank materialism, 
which places life frankly on a physical basis. 
Virtue, if it is taken into account at all, is re- 
solved into health of body merely. It means the 
virtual denial of the soul. Now, this practical 
materialism owes its place and power to a 
natural protest against a false mysticism. It is 
only of modified value even as a protest ; for it 
also neglects the facts of human life. Man is 
man not through that which he has in common 
with animals, but that which distinguishes him 



CULTURE OF BODY 63 

from them. It asserts the great truth that 
wholesomeness of body is necessary for whole- 
someness of mind, but is blind to the converse 
truth that life has a moral as well as a physical 
basis. 

Extremes meet. Side by side with this 
materialistic error, and due to the same initial 
mistake, there is a religious error. St. Paul's 
metaphor from the pugilistic ring, ' I keep my 
body under,' or smite it, has been used to support 
all the mediaeval ascetic disciplines, from pillar- 
saints and flagellants who lashed themselves with 
whips, down to the milder forms of self-torture, 
and indeed the whole Roman monastic system. 
It is stupidly prosaic to interpret the words in 
this literal way. St. Paul was no doubt thinking 
of the physical hardships which he had endured, 
all the bodily afflictions that had been laid on 
him in the course of his great work, but it is to 
be noted that there was nothing of the self- 
inflicted kind of discipline in his life. When he 
used the metaphor, he was advocating not a 
system of penance, but the need of self-control. 
The root of this religious error is that it looks on 
the body as evil, essentially and hopelessly evil, 
and the only chance for a man is to renounce 



64 CULTURE OF BODY 

it. There must be no truce in the great warfare 
between sense and soul. Men were driven into 
the desert to starve and scourge the sinful flesh 
that the spirit might thrive. How common this 
notion of some sort of self-torture is can be seen 
from the Lives of the Saints. So much so, that 
the special religious method seems to be self- 
torture. They keep the body under and bring it 
into subjection, buffet it like the boxers in the 
Isthmian games. The ideal seems to be mutila- 
tion of the physical powers, that the life may be 
purified by pain, and sin expiated by suffering. 
The ideal is to detach the affections from all that 
is of the earth, though the roots bleed as they are 
torn up, to pluck out the right eye, and cut off 
the right hand. The method seems to get some 
support from the example and the teaching of 
every religious genius of the race. 

And yet the method throughout the whole 
history of the world has been a ghastly failure. 
Life cannot be saved by a process of eviction. 
The untenanted house of life lies open for seven- 
fold more devils to inhabit. It is a mistake to 
assume that the best way to strengthen the 
higher nature is to weaken the lower, and that 
spiritual life will grow rich and strong in pro- 



CULTURE OF BODY 65 

portion as physical vitality is lowered. The 
body is part of man, and is no more inherently 
sinful than is the mind or the heart. Indeed, 
our Lord in His diagnosis of sin declared that 
from within, from the heart of a man, proceed the 
baneful brood of sins. Thus it follows that there 
may be the complete ascetic discipline, without 
touching the seat of sin and without gaining any 
real mastery over the life. Our physical nature 
does not exist merely to be trampled upon and 
buffeted. The body has rights, and we have 
duties towards it. It is to misrepresent St. Paul 
to make him in any way an advocate of ascetic 
methods. He did teach self-control and self- 
denial, as every religious teacher must do, but he 
did it in the interests of the self-reverence which 
has little place in the ascetic creed. The folly of 
thinking that it does not matter what is done 
to the body is too evident for much argument. 
After all, the body is the life-long companion of 
the mind, and it cannot be unimportant how it is 
treated. It is through the body that the mind 
and the spirit gather their stores of impressions, 
and through the body they enact their will and 
perform their functions. Mental vigour and 
spiritual insight are only acquired by means of 



66 CULTURE OF BODY 

the physical side of life. Sometimes, it is true, 
the soul seems to be seen most brightly shining 
through the chinks of a weak body, but never if 
the weakness is due to self-inflicted injury. 

Repression, as a mere negative method of 
dealing with the physical life, keeping the body 
under, despising it, throttling its instincts, cannot 
really solve the problem. Yet it must be asserted 
that while no life can become truly great by 
repression alone, also no life can become great 
without it. We never can get away from the 
necessity for self-denial. The body must be 
brought into subjection, and a foot put upon 
the neck of all animal passion. This is the 
eternal truth of religious discipline. But the 
distinction between this and the ascetics is 
simply that this never looks upon it as a thing 
to be done for its own sake, as if there were 
any merit in bodily austerities, while the ascetics 
make repression an end in itself. Self-control 
is necessary for the highest development of the 
body itself. The athlete in training must deny 
himself ceaselessly : if he docs not deny appetite 
he cannot bring himself into fit condition. Much 
more is self-denial necessary for spiritual train- 
ing. The soul cannot be saved with self-denial 



CULTURE OF BODY 67 

merely, yet it cannot be saved without it. The 
mistake of the ascetic is that he raises into an 
end in itself what should only have a place as 
a means. Discipline is not for its own sake : 
it is needed for the sake of the body as well 
as for the sake of the soul. True bodily culture 
implies discipline — chastity, temperance, self- 
control. Culture means harmonious development, 
and that at once condemns excess of all kinds. 
All moralists, even Epicurus, admit this. The 
thought at the root of self-culture is complete- 
ness, balance of powers ; and the aim is total 
self-government. One unbridled passion is 
enough to destroy the beauty of life. One 
excess, if it does no more, can mar the grace 
and harmony of the whole. * He that striveth 
for the mastery must be temperate in all things/ 
He will need to be watchful at the weak places, 
his heart knows where; watchful at the points 
of least resistance. Repression and self-denial 
there must always be. A man, to be a man, 
must have his nature under the curb and must 
be master of his life. 

But the way to keep the body under is to 
live above it, to have a life of the soul that 
will use the body as its willing servant. A 



68 CULTURE OF BODY 

deep religious sense of the sacredness of life 
will alone give us the adequate motive for self- 
mastery. Novalis said that we touch heaven 
when we lay our hand on a human body, re- 
ferring to the sacredness of man as the image 
of God. The Christian faith sets new sanctions 
on the physical life. It is opposed both to the 
ascetic hatred and despising of the body in the 
affected interests of spirituality, and equally 
opposed to weak yielding to every animal im- 
pulse. The body is sacred and must be treated 
sacredly. We must feel the tremendous moral 
motive introduced into life by a sense of the 
body's high destiny. There has been no power 
for personal purity like it in the history of the 
world. The Christian method is not repression, 
but consecration. 



CULTURE OF MIND 



1 Culture is as necessary for the mind as food is for the 
body.'— Cicero. 



CHAPTER III 

CULTURE OF MIND 

'THHE aim of culture, as we have seen, is the 
■*■ perfected development of the whole man. 
The existence of a power or capacity implies duty 
to make the best of it. A sound mind, trained 
to form wise judgments, able to consider serious 
subjects and to reach reasonable conclusions, is 
part of the equipment of a true life, and may 
be one of the best servants of religion. Religion 
has sometimes distrusted the purely intellectual 
way of looking at things, and with cause has 
opposed the arrogance of reason claiming the 
sole right of judging. But not even the most 
obscurantist form of religion can deny that we 
possess not only the right but the duty to strive 
after education of mind. It must be the will of 
God that the mental faculties should be trained 
and developed. It cannot possibly be right to 
mutilate the powers of intellect granted to us. 
To despise thought is not only foolish but sinful ; 

7i 



72 CULTURE OF MIND 

for thought is the medium of all truth. Religion, 
so far from despising thought, concerns itself 
with the largest thoughts and the noblest ideas 
that can enter into the mind of man. Know- 
ledge is the food of thought, and the purpose 
of all religion is to give man the knowledge 
of God. The greatest foe of religion is not 
knowledge but ignorance, not reason but super- 
stition. ' My people are destroyed for lack of 
knowledge,' says the prophet Hosea — a word 
that is echoed in all the prophets. To give 
up reason is to give up being men. More, to 
give up reason is to give up God ; for the world 
is built on reason. 

God has given us reason, and to despise the 
gift is to despise the Giver. If we are required 
to renounce reason, we may ask why we should 
not also renounce faith. If it is right to trample 
on one human faculty, there can be no inherent 
objection to trample on other faculties. If reason 
can be rightly sacrificed, why may not emotion, 
good feeling, charity ? Should men give up 
tenderness of heart, the sacred pity that makes 
the world a gracious place ? The mind is lia- 
ble to mistakes, but so also is the heart. Men 
have abused pity and love in the interests 



CULTURE OF MIND 73 

of what they deemed truth. The inquisitors 
must some of them have made a painful sacrifice 
of their humane feelings, and yet we do not 
defend their conduct. No plan of life can be 
a true or complete one, which does not give a 
place to culture of the mind. A perfect scheme 
will not limit itself to mental education, but it 
cannot neglect it. For the sake of the mind 
we cannot neglect the body, and for the sake of 
the soul we dare not neglect the mind. ' I con- 
sider/ says Addison, ' a human soul without 
education like marble in the quarry, which shows 
none of its inherent beauties till the skill of 
the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the 
surface shine, and discovers every ornamental 
cloud, spot, and vein, that runs through the body 
of it. Education after the same manner, when 
it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view 
every latent virtue and perfection, which, with- 
out such helps, are never able to make their 
appearance.' 

The first danger which mental education meets 
is due to the fact that it comes second in time 
and is therefore inclined to be too long delayed. 
Perhaps this is why Plato, in his conception of 
the ideal republic, makes education begin with 



74 CULTURE OF MIND 

music, which in his definition includes literature, 
and makes gymnastics come later — music for the 
soul and gymnastics for the body — and the soul 
first. 

1 What shall be their education ? Can we find 
a better than the traditional sort ? — and this has 
two divisions : gymnastic for the body, and music 
for the soul.' 

< True.' 

'Shall we begin education with music, and go 
on to gymnastic afterwards ? ' 

' By all means.' 

1 And when you speak of music, do you include 
literature or not ? ' 

■ I do.' 

' You know,' I said, ' that we begin by telling 
children stories which, though not wholly desti- 
tute of truth, are in the main fictitious; and these 
stories are told them when they are not of an age 
to learn gymnastics.' 

1 Very true.' 

' That was my meaning when I said that we 
must teach music before gymnastics.' l 

As a nation our progress in material things has 
outstripped our progress in intellectual, and as 

1 Republic, ii. 376. 



CULTURE OF MIND 75 

individuals physical culture comes before mental ; 
but in both cases the former should only be 
a foundation for the latter. Most young men 
have more muscle than brains, more strength 
than ideas — which is to some extent natural. 
Some few have to be warned against incessant 
mental overwork, but on the whole the greater 
number need to be driven on, or tempted on, to 
begin serious thought of any kind. 

If the relation of education to the mind is like 
that of food to the body, we do not often take 
anything like the same care to give the mind its 
right food as we do to nourish the body. Even 
in the matter of reading, which is an acknow- 
ledged instrument of mental training, it is seldom 
seriously treated as such, and is much more 
commonly used as a means merely of relaxing 
the mind. There is milk for babes in mental 
things as well as in physical and spiritual, and 
many never seem to find any need for stronger 
food. The powers of mind can be atrophied by 
want of use, leaving the mind wayward and 
undisciplined. We must learn to take this as 
part of our religious duty, for we are false to 
our complete endowment as men if we have no 
sense of duty here. We have a glorious heritage, 



76 CULTURE OF MIND 

and if we wilfully refuse our opportunities and 
cut ourselves off from the inner life of our race 
we are impoverishing ourselves. It is never a 
small thing for a man to pass under the influence 
of the master minds, to feel the spell of the rarer 
spirits of the world, to come within the human- 
ising sphere of great writers and thinkers. It is 
much to be saved from the paltriness and sordid- 
ness of ordinary life by the infusion of intellectual 
tastes. 

We are called to undertake cultivation of the 
rich fields of life, and that implies the care 
and method and toil of the husbandman. The 
power of concentrated thought is only got 
through long sustained use. Reason does not 
come by spontaneous generation any more than 
life does. Reason is the crown of intellect. 
The 'dry light of reason,' as Bacon calls it, is 
not struck off as a spark from flint and steel. 
It has to be refined and super-refined, and 
passed through rarer and rarer media, till it 
becomes a light dry, and clear, and pure, fit 
to examine the world by. Wisdom is know- 
ledge organised into life. Even the more evi- 
dent fruits of culture, such as taste for what is 
beautiful and true in art, or the feeling for 



CULTURE OF MIND 77 

style in literature, are capacities which come 
from training, and at last almost become an 
instinct. 

Now, the same natural impulse which makes 
men enjoy exercise of body makes them enjoy 
exercise of mind. There is a certain innate 
sluggishness to be overcome at first in both 
cases. A man who for years has been slack 
will have a good deal of inertia to overcome 
before he can bring himself to enjoy even mod- 
erate physical exertion — but it can be done ; 
and a man whose mind has been mostly fallow 
ground will not easily take to the mental 
plough and hoe ; but when he does persevere 
he will find the natural law operate on his side, 
the law which ordains joy for the sweat of the 
brain as well as for the sweat of the brow. 
It is no lowering of the standard to speak of 
pleasure in intellectual pursuits ; for it has been 
ordained that the legitimate and uncorrupted 
use of all our natural powers should be accom- 
panied with pleasure. And the higher the 
power, the purer the pleasure, as if to tempt 
us on to nobler things. The pleasures of mind 
are keener and more lasting than the more 
material pleasures. More lasting ; so the young 



78 CULTURE OF MIND 

man without intellectual interests is preparing 
himself for an unhappy old age. But effort is 
essential before pleasure is possible. For the 
athlete's joy, the joy of a strong man to run a 
race, one must toil terribly in the training. 
For the scholar's joy, one must ' scorn delights 
and live laborious days.' 

The real training of any part of a man's being 
is its own reward. It remains a possession. In 
the region of the mind we recognise a cultured 
opinion when we hear it. It is the fruit of 
thought, the result of a broad way of looking at 
things. It is not a trick of manner to be caught 
by watching, but comes from serious effort and 
honest toil. The habit of exact thought, if it 
is to be a habit and not an occasional accident, 
is only got through discipline. This is not 
something outside religion. Failure here is 
failure to grasp the religious significance of all 
life. Emerson speaks of the innocent men who 
worship God after the tradition of their fathers, 
but whose sense of duty has not extended to the 
use of all their faculties. The spirit's work on 
us of power and love is often hindered and 
marred for lack of the sound mind. Most of 
the mistakes of sincere religion are due to the 



CULTURE OF MIND 79 

lack of it. All the instruments of religious 
deepening, such as prayer, praise, meditation, 
need this element to enrich their contents and 
to guide their direction. St. Paul with his 
vigorous, robust intellect argued against an 
unintelligent use of religious gifts among the 
Corinthians. ' If I pray in an unknown tongue, 
my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is 
unfruitful. What is it then ? I will pray with 
the spirit and I will pray with the understand- 
ing also : I will sing with the spirit and I will 
sing with the understanding also.' As for our 
religious meditation, much of it is mere idle 
dreaming — vacancy of mind, not thought. We 
must confess to ourselves how little we indulge 
in the habit of consecutive thinking. When we 
give ourselves time to think it often ends in 
mere vacuity, or we discover that our minds have 
been vagrant, wandering hither and thither like 
a stray horse without bit or bridle. What we call 
thinking is aimless and spasmodic, developing 
nothing, going nowhere in particular ; so that 
after a time of meditation, if any one asked us 
what we were thinking on, we would have to 
confess that we did not really know. 

Yet what traitors we are to our race by our 



80 CULTURE OF MIND 

neglect ! We hang broken branches on the 
tree of life, examples of arrested development ; 
for the physical side of life seems to have come 
to its destined end, but there is no limit to 
evolution in the higher spheres. The bounds 
of knowledge can be extended infinitely. In 
the realm of nature, in the world of thought, 
there is no end to the task set to man. That 
task is to conquer the world and make it his 
own ; not merely to occupy and develop its 
material forces, but to understand it, to learn 
its secrets and its lessons. It is humiliating to 
think how little we have made the world our 
own by knowledge, by sympathy, by under- 
standing. To few of us come opportunities for 
original research, but to all of us come oppor- 
tunities for exercising our minds and gaining 
power to make true judgments, and growing 
in power and love and a sound mind. We need 
not fear in the interests of truth reverent inquiry, 
and scholarship, and increase of knowledge. 
Rather, we have to fear lethargy of mind, intel- 
lectual and moral indifference, the materialistic 
life which judges truth by utility, and which 
makes utility mean increased profit or pleasure. 
The practical benefits in life of a cultivated 



CULTURE OF MIND 81 

mind are too many even to mention. Foremost 
among them is the fact that thought gives a 
quality of abstraction which makes the little 
things appear little. It gives a fine insight into the 
value of things and settles their relative impor- 
tance, and should therefore be to us the necessary 
corrective of our common commercial standards. 
It would keep us from the vulgar judgment of 
men according to rank or wealth, and from the 
vulgar judgment of things which sacrifices beauty 
to utility. Intellectual pursuits will at least 
save from absolute bondage to the material 
side of life. To enlarge the number of our 
interests creates a new standard of judgment 
by widening the whole outlook. It would be 
well for us as a community, as well as in- 
dividuals, if we had a more general mental 
culture. Questions would not be so much 
settled by prejudice and party passion. We 
would, for example, not have so many crude 
and wayward experiments in education ; for we 
would see education to be the great question of 
home politics, and would not permit it to be the 
butt of party and the game of sectarian ambition. 
But most of all may be emphasised to young 
men the moral value of intellectual pursuits. 



82 CULTURE OF MIND 

If we would keep the body under, we must live 

above it, and that means practically that we 

must have interests above the body. It is not 

merely that a man may thus be saved from the 

freakishness and follies — 

Such as take lodgings in a head 
That's to be let unfurnished, 

but he will also to a large extent be saved from 
the fierce assaults from an evil environment and 
from his own evil passions. Purity of heart 
and mind is not a negative state : it is an active 
state of love for what is pure and true and 
beautiful. When the city of Mansoul is be- 
sieged and the fight presses sore, we dare not 
leave any entrance undefended ; and when we 
are hard bestead by an overmastering sin, a 
besetting temptation, one strategical move, ap- 
proved of by all masters of this craft of war, 
is that we must not be content to strive and 
pray and resolve : we must garrison the mind 
with noble thoughts and pure desires. ' Not the 
mouse but the hole is the thief,' is a Talmudic 
proverb condemning the receiving and purchasing 
of stolen goods. Leave not a hole in the defence 
for even a mouse to creep in at. The empty 
mind is the devil's opportunity. Many of the 



CULTURE OF MIND 83 

sins of youth get their force through emptiness of 
mind and lack of any sort of intellectual interest. 
How can a man expect to be saved from the seduc- 
tions within and without, if he have no higher 
resources, if he have no interests that claim his 
mind when his daily work is done ? Hugh 
Miller in My Schools and Schoolmasters tells 
how he was able to pass the critical point in his 
life with regard to the huge drinking-customs of 
his early trade as a mason. The men were 
treated on all sorts of occasions, and on this 
special time, at the laying of the foundation- 
stone of a large house, they were all treated to 
whiskey ; and when the party broke up and he 
got home to his books, he found, as he opened 
the pages of a favourite author, that he could 
not master the sense, and the letters were 
dancing before his eyes. He writes : ' I have the 
volume at present before me — a small edition 
of the Essays of Bacon, a good deal worn at 
the corners by the friction of the pocket ; for 
of Bacon I never tired. The condition into 
which I had brought myself was, I felt, one of 
degradation. I had sunk by my own act for 
the time to a lower level of intelligence than 
that on which it was my privilege to be placed ; 



84 CULTURE OF MIND 

and though the state could have been no very 
favourable one for forming a resolution, I in 
that hour determined that I should never again 
sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment 
to a drinking usage ; and with God's help I 
was enabled to hold by the determination/ He 
conquered by his love of intellectual pursuits, 
and his experience is not an uncommon one. 

In our next chapter we will deal with the 
practical instruments of culture, the common 
means of attaining this elevation of mind ; but 
in pursuance of our plan of treating our nature 
as a unity, it is necessary to take note of the 
serious limits to the claim of intellect to 
dominate life. We ought to admit mental 
limitations as we do physical. The life is more 
than meat, and it is also more than mind. 
Exclusive attention to mind is one-sided and 
defeats the true ends of culture. The life has 
higher functions than even the mental. Even 
from the point of view of education, brain de- 
velopment is not everything. Intellect, for 
example, can harden the heart as effectually as 
sense can. Intellect needs a high ideal to save 
it from itself. It must be in the service of 



CULTURE OF MIND 85 

conscience and heart, or it is degraded into a 
mere caterer to the material side of life. In- 
tellectual selfishness can be as hard and cruel 
as any other form of selfishness. The loftiest 
thoughts and the most intellectual pursuits will 
not in themselves save a life from emptiness. 
If any one lived the intellectual life almost from 
his very infancy, it was John Stuart Mill, and 
yet in his Autobiography he tells us how futile 
he found it even in early life. He asked him- 
self : 'Supposing that all the objects of your life 
were realised, and that all the changes in human 
institutions and opinions which you desire were 
completely accomplished at this very moment, 
would it be for you a great joy and happiness ? 
My conscience replied to me directly and 
irresistibly, No. At this response my heart 
failed me ; all the foundations on which my life 
was built were destroyed.' In spite of know- 
ledge and learning and gratified intellectual 
ambition, he felt the poverty and vanity of a 
life that had no more in it than that. The 
pathway to the higher life is not through the 
portals of mind. The mind tempered to a fine 
keenness may have taken on a hard, cold glitter. 
For the ordinary conduct of life there comes 



86 CULTURE OF MIND 

into play other elements for true success. Plato 
declared that those countries are happy where 
either philosophers are made kings or kings 
turn philosophers. Erasmus's comment on this 
philosophical dream is, ' Alas ! this is so far 
from being true, that if we consult all historians 
for an account of past ages, we shall find no 
princes more weak nor any people more slavish 
and wretched, than were the administrations of 
affairs which fell on the shoulders of some 
learned bookish governor.' 

In our own personal life we must know that 
there is an intellectual abstraction which is only 
a form of selfish absorption. The worst of it is, 
or perhaps in the long run the best of it is, that 
such selfishness ruins the very intellectual capa- 
city itself ; for it is a law of life that selfishness 
of all kinds takes the edge off any faculty. 
When it is used for self it loses its brightness 
and keenness. The history of all the arts is full 
of pathetic cases of failure through this. When 
a man even stops in his work to admire himself 
and his facility, his work suffers at once. We at 
least see that a man of keen intellect has his 
own special and peculiar temptations to face. He 
may be freed from narrowness of vision, and at 



CULTURE OF MIND S7 

the same time be chained by narrowness of heart. 
The lowest deep to which man can fall is a 
callous state in which the mind itself seems to 
become stupid even when it is keen enough, for 
it seems unable even to distinguish between right 
and wrong. There are degrees and steps on 
the way to that callous state, steps all the 
more insidious because they are not necessarily 
associated with gross evil. 

One of them, for example, is that of a false 
tolerance often assumed to be a highly intel- 
lectual state of being. There is a breadth of 
view which is at bottom only moral laxity. Life 
and history are seen as a blur, a grey haze, with 
the moral distinctions rubbed out. The way 
the temptation works is obvious. History and 
literature show human life governed by other 
customs and codes of morals and religion in 
other times, and even now in other countries. 
The thought easily arises that nothing can be 
of very much importance when there is such 
a divergence of opinion and habit. The ideal 
seems to be a fine broad philosophic calm which 
accepts everything as it is and never lets itself 
get excited or angry. To this mood of mind a 
massacre in Armenia is only a regrettable inci- 



88 CULTURE OF MIND 

dent in history, at the worst merely a backwash 
in the tide. Not so thinks or speaks the man 
who has gone down and kissed the very founda- 
tions of life, who has the sound mind enlightened 
by the Spirit of Christ. ' All cats are grey in 
the dark,' says the proverb. There are no dis- 
tinctions to the man who lives in a mental and 
moral twilight and is incapable of seeing distinc- 
tions. Much of our broad, cultured tolerance is 
merely the fruit of indifference. We have not 
seen life steadily or seen it whole, if we end in a 
helpless state of indecision in moral things. 

The truth is that in the region of mind, as else- 
where, sacrifice is the law of life. The necessity 
of self-denial is not limited to bodily passions, 
it is as much needed for the highest life of the 
mind as for the best development of the body. 
In every region of man's nature there are two 
voices with opposing counsels presenting divers 
alternatives. The one demands satisfaction, the 
other sacrifice, but though the voices seem hope- 
lessly discordant, there is not such an absolute 
contradiction between the two rival claimants as 
might be imagined. In practice it is found that 
in the very interests of culture self-denial is 
necessary. Life of all kinds is only reached by 



CULTURE OF MIND 89 

a strait gate and a narrow way. * Thought, true 
labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not 
the daughter of pain ? ' asks Carlyle. Sacrifice is 
always the method of salvation. This is not to 
say that through restraint of mind some ultimate 
spiritual good will result, but that only through 
it can intellectual good result. The benefit first 
of all is reaped in its own sphere. The athlete 
must practise restraint of body to attain the 
highest training of body. He must deny himself 
many sorts of indulgence, must regulate carefully 
his food and exercise and sleep, must practise 
self-control, temperance in all things, abstinence 
in some. It is physical control for the sake of 
physical training. This is an essential condition, 
and what is true here is true in the rest of life. 
Discipline is needed for all education, and dis- 
cipline implies self-denial. The result of this 
discipline is to put a keener edge on the instru- 
ment. An undisciplined mind is wayward and 
fitful, easily lured by fancies and conceits, run- 
ning off at a tangent, the sport of idle curi- 
osity and prurient desire. Mental self-control 
is as necessary as physical. The mind must 
not be left to itself for its own sake. It needs 
to be brought into some sort of submission, or 



9 o CULTURE OK MIND 

it will run to waste, even if it does not run to 
evil. 

Further, it must not be left to itself for the 
sake of the higher life, for the sake of the whole 
man. We must often choose between the 
different powers and instincts we possess : to 
select means to reject and to repress. The 
practical principle of choice is a simple one. In 
cases of casuistry we must choose the higher. A 
man is known by the way he chooses in possible 
alternatives. If to a man life is meat, he will 
always follow the material. If to another, mind 
be the measure of life, he can be coldly intel- 
lectual when his heart should burn with the 
passion of pity, but at least he is saved from 
utter bondage to the body. It is to him no 
sacrifice except in name to give up some lower 
pleasure for the sake of a loved intellectual 
pursuit. Something in any case has to be given 
up for it. When we speak of sacrifice we forget 
that sacrifice of some kind or other there must 
always be. Everything in the world has its 
price. To gain the lower completely we must 
give up the higher ; to gain the higher we must 
give up the lower. If we sow to the flesh, it is 
only of the flesh we can reap. Therefore to 



CULTURE OF MIND 91 

speak of restraint of the mind, of sacrificing 
mental powers and opportunities, is not to re- 
commend an unnatural and unheard-of thing. 
It is, indeed, along the line of all law. It is 
sacrificed for the sake of something we hold 
dearer. If a man has seen the vision of the 
spiritual, in giving up the lower he is only grasp- 
ing his true life. There are times when a man 
may have to renounce thought as a guide because 
human life may still be cursed by the hell of a 
'reprobate mind.' There are things a man must 
believe, with or without reason, if need be against 
reason ; because there are things a man must 
believe to remain a man. Intellect by itself will 
not save life from failure. There is a touch of 
terrible truth in Robert Burns's despairing line 
about 'a light from heaven that leads astray.' 
We speak glibly of the certainties of knowledge 
and the absoluteness of truth. It is not so easy 
to state the certainties. Again and again in 
history has it been seen that God hath made 
foolish the wisdom of this world. What in- 
stances there are of the great revelations being 
hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto 
babes, because proud, loveless learning only 
hardens the heart. After all, life is not judged 



92 CULTURE OF MIND 

by mind ; mind is judged by life. Mental culture 
must be kept in its place in the great scheme of 
general culture which seeks to save the whole 
man, character and heart and spirit, as well as 
mind and body. 

Remembering the high place we have accorded 
to intellect in life and religion, it will not be 
imagined that any depreciation of it can be meant 
now, or that we are taking away with one hand 
what was given by the other. Yet it must be 
said with emphasis, that there is a true sense in 
which a man may be called on to make sacrifice 
of certain intellectual qualities to be a complete 
man in the fullest meaning of the word. It was 
this that Romanes found hardest of all in passing 
over from Agnosticism to the Christian faith. 
He tells how his habitual scepticism kept him 
for a quarter of a century from ever performing 
the simplest act of religion, that of prayer ; how 
he had been so long accustomed to constitute 
his reason as the sole judge of truth that even 
when his reason told him that his heart and his 
will should join with reason in seeking God, he 
was too jealous of his reason to exercise his 
will in the direction of his most heartfelt desires. 
He admitted that there were higher aspirations 



CULTURE OF MIND 93 

of his nature than the intellectual, admitted 
that since these aspirations were there he ought 
to cultivate them also, yet all these years he 
could not bring himself to make a venture in 
the direction of faith. According to his better 
judgment he even felt this to be irrational, and 
to justify himself he was in the habit of making 
what he felt to be only excuses ; and he candidly 
confessed that, whatever were other men's temp- 
tations and difficulties, his was an undue regard 
to reason as against heart and will. 

What we need in this, as in all other regions of 
our nature, is to realise the sacredness of life, and 
so to have a deep sense of responsibility and 
duty. We will be saved from the vanity of some 
intellectual pursuits by feeling the true religious 
sacredness of mind. We must cover this region 
of our nature with religious sanctions. We need 
sanctification of mind as much as of any other 
part of our being ; perhaps more, for it is with us 
as with Milton's Satan — 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

It is only when God is the pivot of our life that 
we are safe, and intellect can take its right place 



94 CULTURE OF MIND 

and play its harmonious part in the full scheme. 
If we would have our life raised, we must submit 
mind, as well as heart and conscience and will, 
to the process of sanctification. 

We are not without our ideal here as in the 
rest of life. Christ is the Christian ideal. To 
have the same mind in us which was in Him is 
distinctly set before us as our aim. How full His 
mind was of beauty and truth, full of sweet 
thoughts and noble ideas, because full of love. 
It was the perfection of culture ; yet with the 
Cross in it all through, with constant restraint of 
intellectual ambition, constant giving up of all 
worldly and selfish desires, constant thought of 
God and constant thoughtfulness of man. If we 
had the same mind, could think the same sort 
of thoughts, judge life by the same standards, 
accustom ourselves to the same great ideas, 
pettiness would pass from us and evil would die 
as in His presence. A mind so held in thrall 
could not go far astray. We want consecrated 
intellect as well as emotion. There is ample room 
for it in Christian work, for inventiveness and 
enterprise in methods, for the wise furtherance of 
great causes. There are thousands waiting to be 
led to great enterprises by the man of original, 



CULTURE OF MIND 95 

consecrated mind — who never arrives. There is 
room also for satisfied intellectual research in 
Christian truth, where are hid all the treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge. 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL 
CULTURE 



' Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, 
and wise men use them ; for they teach not their own use ; 
but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by 
observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to 
believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, 
but to weigh and consider. 1 — Bacon. 



CHAPTER IV 

INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

/ THHE approved methods of attaining mental 
■*■ culture seem almost commonplace, but the 
great things in life are very simple and within the 
reach of all. The differences among men in this 
department depend on the use made of the 
common instruments that lie ready to our hand. 
Matthew Arnold gives these three methods, and 
in this order : reading, observing, thinking. The 
order may be accepted, not as one of merit, but 
only because the purpose, of reading and observ- 
ing is to lead up to, and to give material for, 
thinking. Reading means taking advantage of 
the observations and thoughts and opinions of 
others which are so bountifully stored up for us 
in books. Observing would comprise all that 
comes to us from our own experience through 
the various avenues of approach. It will in- 
clude knowledge of men and the world, love 
of the beautiful in nature and in art, and even 

99 



ioo INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

science in its practical aspects. It will include 
conversation, which is after all one of the chief 
methods of education. 

Perhaps observation should come first among 
the methods of culture, because it is earlier than 
the more artificial method of reading. We often 
forget that a child learns more in the first five 
years of its life than in any similar period after- 
wards. It has to learn a language, and all the 
common facts of the world, the properties of 
things, even the qualities of matter. The soul 
makes its first discovery of the world through the 
senses. There is no school so efficient and so 
equipped as the school of nature, and the blunder 
most of us make is that we do not take the hint 
from the educational process that goes on un- 
ceasingly during the first years of a child's life. 
We interrupt its course instead of directing it and 
developing it. There is much meaning for man 
in the old classical fable of Antaeus, the giant 
who was a son of Earth and challenged all to 
wrestle with him. No one could throw him, 
because every time he touched his mother earth 
he received new strength. Hercules discovered 
the secret of his strength and overcame him by 
lifting him up from the earth and crushing him 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 101 

in the air. Man, so long as he keeps his feet on 
fact, so long as he keeps in contact with nature 
and is open to the influences of the world around 
him, gets ever new accessions of strength and 
knowledge. The best education grows from 
the broadening intelligence that comes through 
eye and ear and the simple experiences of life. 
The man who forms the habit of observation in 
its widest sense lives in a world that grows wider 
and richer, and finds in it an inexhaustible source 
not only of increasing knowledge but also of fresh 
wonder and delight. The profoundest wisdom is 
always that which is being constantly verified by 
contact with nature and with life. The attitude 
of the best culture is that of the alert observer 
intensely interested in events and experiences. 
The man who goes through life knowing nothing 
of nature and little of the world around him 
may be very learned in books, but can never be 
completely educated. 

Our whole system of education suffers from 
our neglect to take the broad hint that nature 
gives us. We think of education as the same 
thing as instruction, and forget that instruction 
is only one of the methods of education, and 
not the most important at that. ' Most parents, 



102 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

of whatever rank or condition, fancy they have 
done all they need do for the education of their 
children when they have had them taught such 
things as custom requires that persons of their 
class should learn ; although with a view to the 
formation of character, the main end and object 
of education, it would be almost as reasonable 
to read a treatise on botany to a flower-bed, 
under the notion of making the plants grow and 
blossom.' 1 One of the ways to obviate this 
mistake of our common education, is to cultivate 
the faculty of observation. It has value in every 
region of life. Artists differ not so much in 
their technical skill and mechanical capacity, as 
in the truth and freshness of observation. A 
trained eye notes colour and form, and selects 
in mental vision a composition of beauty. Of 
course, in speaking of observation as an instru- 
ment of culture, we do not mean the eye and the 
other senses, but the faculties which use the 
senses. It is really a disciplined mind making use 
of the various means of impulse and information. 
It is very rare to find the perceptive powers 
highly cultivated, though we should imagine 
them the most natural. Ruskin's judgment 

1 Guesses at Truth. 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 103 

was that a hundred men can talk for one who 
can think, but a thousand men can think for one 
who can see. Our system of education is largely 
to blame, since it is usually a purely literary 
education, the teaching of words rather than of 
things. The city life, which is the environment 
of so many children, makes it difficult for them 
to train observation, and in many ways civilisa- 
tion has dulled the powers of man. Hardly one 
of us could tell the time with anything like 
accuracy if we were deprived of clocks and 
watches. The actual observation of a fact is 
of far more educational value than the know- 
ledge of the same fact from a book. The latter 
adds a useful bit of information, the former 
trains a faculty which is a permanent possession. 
It is difficult to understand our carelessness as 
to this instrument of education, which is really 
at the basis of all possible culture. We lose 
much happiness and interest as well as much 
real training. The world becomes more wonder- 
ful as man learns more about it, and Nature 
opens up ever new vistas of beauty and mystery. 
Intellectual curiosity grows by what it feeds on. 
Within a given time in new surroundings, one 
man will notice practically nothing, another will 



104 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

notice many new facts and make many deduc- 
tions from them. To the untrained eye and ear, 
a hedge or ditch means nothing but the names. 
I once met an artisan in a country walk who 
knew every plant and insect, all the flora and 
fauna of that countryside, and all he had for his 
favourite pursuit was the half day a week which 
other working men spent in loafing about the 
streets. As he pointed out to me interesting 
things which I had carelessly passed by as 
weeds, I blushed for my ignorance and blind- 
ness. The natural sciences are specially useful 
in training men in this direction. The founda- 
tion of all science lies in trusting and training 
the senses. 

Observation, of course, must include classifica- 
tion of the facts to be of practical use. We 
need to have the mass brought into order and 
system. The observant eye is that which 
fastens on the link between facts, which sepa- 
rates one from another and classifies others 
together. The keener eye trained to observe 
closely dismisses the superficial likenesses that 
deceive others, and gets at the points of funda- 
mental resemblance. Without this the world 
is a bewildering mass of unrelated things, 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 105 

which patient observation brings into order and 
beauty. 

We need to distinguish between the mere 
acquisition of facts or accumulation of know- 
ledge and the development of the faculties. The 
evolution of a faculty is of more importance 
than the mere gaining of information. It is the 
difference between perfecting an organism and 
filling up a receptacle. It is not necessarily 
developing the mind to be shovelling into it 
other people's thoughts. If these thoughts are 
not assimilated, the result can only be mental 
indigestion. The picking up of crumbs of know- 
ledge is not in itself education. When we observe, 
we should ask ourselves if we also consider. 
The facts are the material for thought. They 
are needed for comparison, from which the 
mind classifies, notes differences and resem- 
blances, arranging knowledge in order and 
system. 

But above that is the discovery of causality, 
the explanation of facts by law. The human 
mind will never believe that anything can take 
place without a reason for it. In spite of false 
starts and mistakes due to accepting mere 
sequence for cause, and the errors of hasty 



106 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

generalisation, and the fallacies of prejudice and 
the like, we cannot be content till we see mean- 
ing and reason and cause for what we observe 
and consider. Here we recognise the need of 
trained intellect, the cultivation of habits of true 
reasoning, by which processes of thought are 
brought to careful scrutiny that sophistries may 
be detected. For purposes of training, mathe- 
matics and logic are valuable, as mental gym- 
nastics, if nothing else. Logic, of course, has a 
danger of trusting too much to the mere steps 
of formal reasoning, without examining the 
contents of thought. A man is tempted to 
trust too much to his method, and look more 
to the verbal accuracy of his argument than to 
its truth. It is related of Jowett, the late Master 
of Balliol, that when asked whether logic was an 
art or a science, he replied that it was neither an 
art nor a science, but a dodge. The anecdote 
probably refers to this danger we have men- 
tioned, through forgetting that logic is only a 
method of disposing of thought, and has itself 
no real contents. Still, many a fallacy would 
have been killed at its birth, if it had been 
brought to the test of logic and examined care- 
fully. A study of philosophy also would be a 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 107 

corrective of many a crude position assumed by 
science. It would save science from any super- 
ficial dogmatism, and would reveal what are the 
real fundamental problems of existence. But 
no mere study of logic and philosophy and 
science will give the maturity of mind which 
we call wisdom. It needs personal reflection 
and experience acting on a reflective mind. 

In this connection the importance of memory 
may be mentioned, as storing up for us im- 
pressions and observations enabling us to profit 
by previous knowledge. Methods of study differ 
according to temperament, and it is foolish 
to speak as if there were one sacred way of 
availing ourselves of the material at our dis- 
posal. Some men remember only when they 
have written down what they want to imprint 
on the mind. Others from their own experience 
are inclined to question whether the benefits of 
this laborious method are worth the waste of time, 
and agree with Dr. Johnson that what is twice 
read is commonly better remembered than what 
is transcribed, and that the true art of memory 
is the art of attention. This applies to observa- 
tion perhaps more than to reading. Certainly, 
a thing fixed on the mind is of more value than 



108 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

the same thing copied into a commonplace- 
book, even if it is easily available for use ; for 
we never know what living seed of thought the 
piece of knowledge may contain and may all 
the time be fructifying in the mind. Memory 
is a faculty which must be cultivated in some 
fashion, unless life is to be to us only a series 
of impressions disconnected from the thinking 
and experiencing self. It is memory that makes 
observation of any permanent use. It has 
always material for thought ready to hand, 
recalling instances, resemblances, comparisons, 
contrasts. Through memory the past is made 
a conscious influence in the life of the present. 
We are not the men we might have been either 
in knowledge or character, because we have 
brought so little from the past. Growth in 
knowledge depends on memory. A mind with 
a scientific bent and even with excellent capacity 
for thought can achieve little if it can never 
trust previous impressions and observations. It 
will be like the hopeless labour of Sisyphus, 
ever rolling uphill a mighty stone which never 
fails to roll down again. 

The memory can be cultivated in the best 
sense by paying heed to the events and experi- 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 109 

ences of each day. This is to be done by 
selection, by letting the really important things 
leave their mark on us and by letting the un- 
important slip. There is a true sense in which 
the art of remembering is the art of forgetting. 
A good memory does not mean the retentive 
one that never forgets and lays hold of every- 
thing indiscriminately, but the memory that 
selects the right things to keep fast. The 
memory that hangs on to all kinds of unrelated 
knowledge turns the mind into a scrap-heap 
with much in it that is trivial and much that is 
only rubbish. Nothing is more tiresome than 
a relation of all sorts of unimportant details led 
off into endless side issues and miscellaneous 
recollections. The real secret of memory is vivid 
impression. We forget the things that are vague 
and indefinite, while the things we care intensely 
about make their indelible mark on us. So 
the keener and richer our minds become, the 
more easily do we remember what feeds them 
and interests them. 

A great help is to unify the different items of 
knowledge, fitting them into each other and 
placing them in their natural connection. This 
is essential, as the mere gathering of informa- 



no INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

tion and acquiring of facts, to be stowed away 
in the pigeon-holes of memory, may weaken 
the mind instead of strengthening it. Pure 
memory-work may to a large extent be wasted 
labour from this point of view. Getting lists of 
dates by heart will not necessarily improve 
the faculties. Any system for aiding weak 
memories which depends on artificial associa- 
tion, is on wrong lines ; for though it may help 
one to remember facts, it does nothing to train 
the mind. Only things which have a real rela- 
tion to each other should be associated together 
in memory. There can be no mental disci- 
pline in connecting an important fact with a 
trivial and accidental one. Hammerton recalls 
a book upon memory which was very popular in 
its day in which this artificial method of associa- 
tion is advocated. Men who forgot their um- 
brellas were told that they ought always to 
associate the image of an umbrella with that of 
an open door, so that they could never leave 
any house without thinking of one. ' But would 
it not be preferable to lose two or three 
guineas annually rather than see a spectral 
umbrella in every doorway ? ' 

Observation, as an instrument of mental 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE in 

culture, must be defined widely enough to in- 
clude social intercourse, conversation, and the 
direct contact with other minds. Many a living 
impulse is received from the impact of a fresh 
intellect. Society as well as solitude is needed 
to produce true culture. Every student owes 
much to comradeship in kindred studies, as 
every worker owes much of his skill to comrade- 
ship in work. There have been young men's 
societies which have been a great element in 
the formation of character and in the production 
of intellectual taste, where mind sharpened 
mind as iron sharpens iron, where noble 
ambitions were nursed and encouraged. So 
much of our social intercourse is trivial, that men 
do not often dive into each others' minds and 
bring up treasures from the depth ; yet there 
have been times of great culture when con- 
versation was practically the only method avail- 
able. The dialogues of Plato suggest to us what 
was possible in Greek life, and even yet the 
great value of oral teaching lies in the contact 
of mind with mind. The solitary thinker loses 
much of impulse and correction and gets out 
of touch with life. We might all make more of 
this important instrument of education. There 



ii2 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

is no one from whom we might not learn some- 
thing, and many a man grows rich in mind 
through his healthy interest in life and keen 
curiosity, who has very little trafficking with 
books. In his essay on the education of children, 
Montaigne recommends that a boy should be 
trained to learn from conversation. ' Let him 
be advised, being in company, to have his eye 
and ear in every corner of the room, for I find 
that the places of greatest honour are commonly 
possessed by men that have least in them, and 
that the greatest fortunes are not always accom- 
panied by the ablest parts. Let him examine 
every man's talent — a peasant, a bricklayer, or a 
passenger. A man may learn something from 
every one of these in their several capacities, and 
something will be picked out of their discourse 
whereof some use may be made at one time or 
another ; nay, even the folly and impertinence of 
others will contribute to his instruction. By 
observing the graces and fashions of all he sees 
he will create to himself an emulation of the 
good and a contempt of the bad.' 

The next great instrument of mental culture 
is books and reading. A man who is ignorant of 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 113 

what others before him have thought will turn 
down many a blind alley, will set great store on 
ideas that have been proved false, and will prob- 
ably overrate his own intellectual accomplish- 
ments. We would never travel very far if we 
had always to go back to the beginning and call 
everything to question and start at first prin- 
ciples. Books are the record of other people's 
experience and thought and feeling, and as such 
are of immense importance, widening our vision, 
extending our limited range of life, correcting 
our own conclusions, and giving vast data for our 
thinking. But after all, we must remember that 
what they contain is only the material in the 
rough which we ourselves must use for our 
culture. They are a valuable instrument, and 
are often the first real impulse many men get for 
the intellectual life. Most of us would be poorly 
equipped mentally if all we had gained from 
books were taken away from us. At the same 
time, the great education is life, not literature. 
The quality of our mind and character is formed 
by our vital experience, the fruit of our own 
thought and feeling and action. Knowledge can 
be added to us indefinitely from the record of 
what others have learned, but wisdom must 



114 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

issue from the living source within ourselves. 
Even the value of what others can give us is 
determined by our capacity to make it our own, 
and to profit by their observation and thinking. 
Erudition does not mean a cultivated mind. 
The mere scholar may have never learned 
wisdom, and all his learning may only be the 
echo of others' words. Indeed it is astonishing 
how intellectual workers will go on repeating the 
fallacies of their predecessors, through their 
blind dependence on what is stated in books. 
Generation after generation of commentators 
will repeat ancient and traditional interpreta- 
tions, because they rarely trust their own in- 
dependent vision and judgment. Some of the 
greatest thinkers and writers were not bookmen 
in our sense of the word. The bookmen are 
those who write prolix commentaries on their 
work. 

There is a tendency to overestimate the value 
of books in any scheme of culture. The mere 
knowledge of authors is supposed to guarantee 
education. Yet we know from sad experience 
that a man can be bookish, and even learned, 
a very dungeon of scholarship, and be narrow 
in his judgments and cramped in his mind. 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 115 

Shakespeare satirises pedantic book-learning and 
the exaggerated value of books in the scene 
in Love's Labour's Lost where Sir Nathaniel 
the curate and Holofernes the schoolmaster 
bandy long words and Latin quotations with 
poor old policeman Dull. The curate apologises 
to the schoolmaster for the policeman's igno- 
rance, 'Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties 
that are bred in a book : he hath not eaten paper, 
as it were ; he hath not drunk ink ; his intellect 
is not replenished, he is only an animal, only 
sensible in the duller parts.' Our view of culture 
has been too scholastic, too much a literary 
acquirement. We see that in many other ways 
— in practical life, in dealing with affairs, in ob- 
servational science, in love of nature — genuine 
elements of culture can be attained. Literature 
is a great gift to man, and all the inventions 
which make it common property are among the 
triumphs of the race. Yet a protest is needed 
against indiscriminate valuation of it. Like 
many gifts, it carries a menace in its bosom. 

It is easy to speak in praise of books, and to 
tell of the pleasure and profit reading can bring 
to a man, but perhaps there is nothing in our 
lives to-day which requires more careful regula- 



u6 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

tion — and which gets less. Even printing is not 
an unmixed blessing. Information was never 
more universally extended, but information is not 
education. ^ Everybody can read, but the propor- 
tion of thought and wisdom to folly has not in- 
creased in its due ratio. We seem to think we 
are doing well if we are reading a book — any 
book. Much of our reading is from idleness and 
mere vacuity. Or we read in the vain idea that 
we are thus entering into the life of thought, 
when as a matter of fact reading is made a 
substitute for thinking. Books must always take 
an important place in culture, but they are only 
one instrument of culture. Nay, reading is only 
a means to a means, for the chief instrument of 
culture is thought, and books have their place as 
an inducement to thought. Literature is not an 
end in itself, but a means to develop sound judg- 
ment and taste and intelligence. Of course 
there is a place for recreation, a mere enjoyment 
in reading, but it is not with that we are specially 
concerned in our present connection. Books 
have a ministry of comfort, and a ministry of 
innocent happiness, and one might speak long 
of the delights of reading, and the resource it 
affords to a man in almost any situation. Our 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 117 

present purpose, however, is to deal with reading 
as it ministers to intellectual culture. It was 
never so important and perhaps so difficult to 
know what to read, just because more than ever 
of the making many books there is no end. 

We must soon settle for ourselves what not to 
read, or we may as well give up reading altogether. 
The principle of selection means a principle of 
rejection. We must be willing to know nothing 
of the book of the month, or of the day, or of the 
moment. We have to give up the attempt to 
keep up with the outflow of books even along 
one line. There is no reason in the world why 
we need read the reams of minor poetry if we 
have not lived with the great poets who have 
fed the life of man. If reading is to be to us, 
as it may be, a means of culture, we must have 
a rigorous standard. We must avoid what De 
Quincey called the gluttony of books. It is a 
very good plan to give most of our spare time 
for reading to the great standard accredited 
books. These have achieved their position 
through merit. Time has sifted her treasures 
for us, and that not by haphazard. Why waste 
time over the ephemeral prints, the endless 
magazine articles, if we are ignorant of the 



u8 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

world's best works ? If we have serious views 
of the place of literature in culture, we must do 
more than read these books once and have done 
with them, as we read a newspaper leader or 
most modern novels. We must live with them 
and let them influence the very fibre of our 
minds, giving us elevated thoughts and calm 
standards of judgment. After all, in spite of 
the endless making of books, we can make some 
headway with those which by common consent 
are put on the first rank. It is not altogether 
a counsel of perfection to set before ourselves 
the mastery of the world's best. 

Culture is not so much concerned with belles 
lettres, or aesthetic style, or the curiosities of 
literature, as with the great formative books of 
universal and permanent value. And it is not 
the number of these we master which is most 
important, but the closeness of our intercourse. 
A man has received more true culture from the 
constant and patient study of one book than is 
got by the ordinary desultory reader who samples 
whole libraries. The influence of the Bible on 
the life and thought of men need only be 
mentioned to prove this. Not that we should 
subscribe to the narrow doctrine of some that 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 119 

no other book is needed. That is not piety, 
though it looks like it. Still, it would be well 
if we enforced anew on ourselves the value of 
the Bible as literature. Apart altogether from 
what the modern world owes to the Bible, 
morally and religiously, our debt to it as litera- 
ture is immense. Almost every great writer has 
acknowledged his own individual indebtedness. 

More important than the question what to read 
is the question how to read. A true method of 
reading will solve the problem of the kind of 
reading. If we read with attention and system, 
and with desire to understand and profit, we 
will naturally discard the trivial and empty 
books, and will reserve ourselves for those that 
are worthy of our steel. The fruits of culture in 
wisdom, good taste, critical appreciation, are 
not gathered by chance. They are not a gift, 
but a growth. The attention which a serious 
book requires is a power that comes from culti- 
vation. Emerson speaks of creative reading in 
which the mind is braced by labour and invention, 
so that the page we read becomes illuminated 
with manifold allusion. The suggestiveness of 
a book depends very much on how we come 
to it, and the impression it makes is often a test 



120 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

of ourselves more than a test of the book. If we 
read with care and sympathy, taking pains to 
understand and appreciate, we will soon find out 
the books which nourish our mind, and will agree 
with Macaulay when he said that he would rather 
live in a garret with a library than in a palace 
without one. 

We have said that for the purposes of culture 
all the means referred to have their place as 
giving food for thought. The object of all 
education is to form the mind, not merely to 
furnish it with information, even the best that 
books can give. Information is useful and 
necessary to give data for making judgments 
and arriving at decisions, but it is thought which 
is the instrument of mental culture. John Fos- 
ter, in a letter to a correspondent, remarked that 
in the review of life we shall see that perhaps the 
worst fault was that we had thought far too 
little. All who have tried in any way to impress 
their fellows with any truth have felt that this 
was the one needful thing, to get them to think, 
to take account of the facts and open their minds 
to great issues. 

It is so easy to refuse to consider facts till 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 121 

the facts hit us in the face, when it is usually 
too late for any practical purpose. We seem 
to have a constitutional disinclination to con- 
sider matters of grave moment ; and to many of 
us the last thing we would do is to stop in our 
breathless life and give ourselves space to think. 
We seldom think anything out right to its end. 
We even take up our opinions ready made, giving 
little personal investigation to a subject, with no 
serious regard for the facts on which a decision 
should be built, and with no deliberate thought 
on the great issues that hang on a decision. 
Among all the types of character in our midst 
— many of them excellent and some of them 
beautiful — the thoughtful type is perhaps the 
rarest. The reason, of course, is that thoughtful- 
ness implies the collectedness of mind which can 
only come from a long discipline. Complacent 
drifting with the tide is common in every 
region. In politics we find everywhere the 
unintelligent acceptance of a party creed, where 
men repeat the old catch-words of party, and do 
not really set themselves to master the problems 
they are called on to decide. In business, even 
when skill and energy and industry are lavished 
on work, there is often a lack of initiative which 



122 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

comes from a complete grasp of the situation. 
In religion, how common it is to find the tradi- 
tional and the conventional, and how seldom 
the original. By original is not meant the sense- 
less striving after new opinions, but a living 
faith that is the expression of a man's own 
thought and experience. We do not often hear 
a live voice that is more than an echo, speaking 
out of the depths of personal and experimental 
knowledge. 

We have seen that books, which are a record 
of what other men have thought and felt, and 
should be a valuable provocative of thought, 
are commonly used by us as a substitute for 
thinking, or as a sedative to the mind, if not even 
a soporific. Our practical activities and methods 
of work and busy ways may be tending in the 
same direction of stifling thought. It is far 
easier to be busy than to be thoughtful. Activity 
may be not the fruit of thought, but a substitute 
for it. It is indeed one of the commonest 
expedients to drown serious thought in a flood 
of activity. A man can forget the keenest 
impressions and can forget grief by throwing 
himself into all sorts of affairs. There are more 
ways of finding distraction than by the common 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 123 

way of worldly pleasure. Business may be a 
distraction to a man, by which he gets rid of 
the clamant call to consider, to give calm and 
serious reflection to the greatest questions in the 
world. We may be so engrossed in living that 
we can neglect life. With the countless distrac- 
tions of our modern life, with the many ways of 
evading thought — by reading, by business, by 
pleasure, and the like — we may well take the 
counsel to heart, to gather ourselves at the centre 
and consider and think on our ways. ' A thinking 
man is the worst enemy the Prince of Dark- 
ness can have,' says Carlyle ; and that is true, 
for thoughtlessness, carelessness, intellectual and 
moral indifference are the great stumbling-blocks 
in the way of the progress of true religion. 

Culture has suffered in reputation by its 
aloofness from life, as if the mere existence of 
taste and judgment and thoughtfulness were a 
complete end in itself. True thinking needs to 
be directed in some form or other to practical 
issues, and culture needs to be related to life. 
It justifies itself by its invaluable contribution 
to the world. What we need most is not 
speculation nor vague pondering over a general 
problem, nor the logical sequence of thought. 



124 INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 

A man may have many intellectual interests, 
and may exercise his brain in very strenuous 
fashion and be absorbed in profound specula- 
tions, may love to crack the hardest nuts in 
theology or philosophy or scientific investiga- 
tion, and yet may come short of the highest 
demands made upon him by true culture. In- 
deed, science and theology and philosophy and 
the intellectual life generally, may be made a 
distraction to escape the further appeal of 
thought. It is much to be seriously inclined, to 
be open to consider difficult subjects, to have 
trained the mind in veracity and accuracy and 
fed it with noble ideas, to have thought broadly 
and largely on the vast problems of the world. 
That mental discipline gives the serious bent 
and the wide outlook, and at least saves a man 
from shallowness and incoherence of thought 
and light-headed Mightiness. It also saves from 
the frivolity of mind and emptiness of life which 
enable some to float gaily on the surface, or 
which in others lead to satisfaction in corrupt 
and evil pleasures, contentment with the life of 
sense. But some have reached splendid views 
of life at large, who have never translated it into 
terms of their own life nor come to close quarters 



INSTRUMENTS OF MENTAL CULTURE 125 

with themselves. We need to see life in the light 
of duty and personal responsibility and privilege, 
and find one of our highest motives for self- 
culture in the equipment of self for high service. 

The methods we have dealt with of attaining 
culture may be summed up in a quotation from 
Ruskin, which states in general language what 
we must each work out for ourselves. ' Intellec- 
tual education,' he says in Fors Clavigera, l consists 
in giving the creature the faculties of admiration, 
hope, and love. These are to be taught by the 
study of beautiful nature ; and the sight and 
history of noble persons ; and the setting forth 
of noble objects of action.' These correspond 
pretty accurately to our three divisions, observ- 
ing, reading, thinking. The test of the value of 
our culture we can apply to ourselves : whether 
it has really inspired us with admiration and 
love for all that is good and beautiful and true, 
and how it works out in the service of our 
lives. 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 



' We are not born to solve the problems of the world, but 
to find out where the problem begins, and then to keep 
within the limits of what we can grasp.' — Goethe. 



CHAPTER V 

CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

THE possibilities of life are not exhausted 
by the careful cultivation of one special 
faculty. We are always beset by the temptation 
to lay the stress on a particular side of our 
nature, at the expense of all other capacities. 
In the intellectual life we are usually developed 
along one line, and are inclined to underestimate 
the other branches of study and knowledge. The 
scientist glorifies his subject and his methods, 
sometimes without a glimmer of a notion of the 
vast region of thought of which the philosopher 
takes charge. The philosopher deals with his 
systems in a kind of vacuum, with little tolerance 
for the wisdom of the man of affairs. The 
business man sometimes has a delightful oblivion 
of both science and philosophy, and cultivates 
his calculating and practical thinking powers. 
While all of them may be ignorant that there 
is a world of art, or poetry, or religion existing 
k 129 



130 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

for others. It is dreadfully easy to grow narrow 
and cramped even by those who do live a real 
intellectual life. We are forced to be specialists 
by the necessities of our work, and the danger is 
imminent to all of neglecting the larger, richer 
life, which is our birthright as the heirs of time. 
In religion also the same danger arises of defin- 
ing the saintly character in terms of one special 
quality. The mediaeval church looked for the 
ascetic note in its saints, abstraction from the 
world and the virtues of the recluse. We can go 
as far in the other extreme, and ask for nothing 
but fussy practicality and a blatant zeal. If we 
try to imagine the finest type of character to 
which we would gladly give the name of saintli- 
ness, we find ourselves giving the pre-eminence 
to one of the graces. We usually think of one 
special quality, and not of a full-orbed person- 
ality defective on no side of true human nature. 
The fact is, that in all these regions of life we 
need to be reminded of the many-sided per- 
fection which ought at least to be our ideal. 
In most things our measure of excellence is 
liable to be influenced by what we think our own 
strong point. Selclcn in his shrewd lawyer's 
Table Talk exemplified this by a tale of Nash 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 131 

the poet, poor enough (as poets used to be), 
seeing an alderman with his gold chain, upon 
his great horse, and said by way of scorn to one 
of his companions, ' Do you see yon fellow, how 
goodly, how big he looks? Why, that fellow 
cannot make a blank verse ! ' If capacity to 
make even indifferent blank verse were to be 
the test of aldermen or of any other posts of 
authority, there would be some startling changes 
in the world. All of us in our judgments — even 
poets — need to take a wider view than that of 
our special calling. We would say that for com- 
plete health and perfect physical condition the 
growth should be all-round in every power and 
part. And similarly, we would say that the 
complete man must not be narrow in his sym- 
pathies or his interests. The chief purpose of 
all education should be to produce a well 
balanced, fully developed mind. It is the 
purpose of the great education of life to bring 
every power to its best, to draw out the highest 
faculties, and yet leave no part entirely uncared 
for. This is the meaning of the much abused 
phrase, general culture. It lives as a constant 
protest against one-sidedness. In these days 
of specialising, when in everything men arc 



132 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

forced to limit themselves, to do almost 
exclusively the one thing they can do best or 
have learned to do, the protest is particularly 
needed. In all sorts of work this tendency is 
going on, and increasingly so. It may not be 
possible to alter the conditions of life to-day, 
and perhaps we should not want to change 
them, but it is foolish to shut our eyes to the 
dangers and drawbacks of present conditions. 

Of course we need to remember that there 
are dangers on both sides. There are ever a 
Scylla and Charybdis to be passed in the 
voyage of life. The chief intellectual tempta- 
tion of culture is the danger of being super- 
ficial. This arises from the very nature of the 
case, as culture implies breadth of interest. 
We are inclined to make it too much a matter 
of accomplishments. The very variety of pur- 
suits produces the danger. The man whose 
ideal is mental culture is always liable to 
degenerate into the mere dilettante. Culture is 
a useful corrective of undue development of one 
part at the expense of the rest, for it aims at 
symmetry of life. A tree to grow into its 
fulness must have light all round it. If it is 
too near a house, it will grow out on one 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 133 

side dwarfed or distorted. The mind needs 
open space and light all round it to grow in 
fulness, and culture at least attempts to give 
it that. A largeness of interest in many things 
counteracts the narrowness of our necessary 
specialism in all branches of activity. 

But culture in the repulsion from the one 
ditch runs the risk of falling into the ditch on 
the other side. A man in the name of culture 
can live with vacuous general interests, with no 
special life-work, with nothing he has made his 
own. To such is due the contempt into which 
the very name has fallen. It has come to mean 
the quality of the dilettante, a smattering of 
everything and a mastery of nothing, often 
another name also for affectation. Even when 
the effort after culture is serious and sincere, 
there are pitfalls that lie near the life of study. 
One is the overfastidious taste which keeps a 
man from ever making any real use of his 
acquirements, and which will not let him pro- 
duce anything, making him spend his life in 
dreams. Another is the danger of being 
smothered in a mass of detail, letting the 
acquisition of knowledge grow faster than any 
power of using it. To trifle with this and 



134 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

that, touching now on one subject and now on 
another, never concentrating the mind on the 
mastery of a single subject, is to spread out 
into shallows what might have gone to depth. 
It is often due to weakness of character, lack of 
perseverance and of will, and of serious applica- 
tion. There is a many-sided cultivation which is 
easier attained and more commonly possessed than 
the force of character needed to perfect one 
branch. 

This is often the value of a definite profession 
or business. In the devoted application to a 
profession a young man's intellectual energy is 
often for the first time in his life concentrated. 
His school education embraced so many sub- 
jects, among which he could only dabble, 
that his powers of mind were scattered, while 
his professional training gives him at least a 
command of one line which strengthens his 
character, and reveals to him the value of per- 
sistent labour. The foes of culture are of its 
own household, and pedantry is one of the chief 
of these, due to ignorance of life and an exalted 
conception of mere scholastic acquirements. It 
usually also develops into a petty conceit, which 
makes mind the measure of man, and a know- 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 135 

ledge of books the measure of mind. It creates 
a new barrier between men, as exclusive and 
contemptuous as any other class or caste dis- 
tinction. We are called to avoid the two ex- 
tremes, learned pedantry on the one side, and 
ignorant contempt of learning on the other. 
Both are foolish, but the former is the more 
culpable of the two, since it is in the name of a 
pretended enlightenment, though it really has 
its origin in superficial and vague knowledge. 
Something is to be said for the advantages of 
specialism even in education. 

The young man who is allowed to follow the 
lines of work for which he is most fitted is more 
likely to succeed than when he is set to a variety 
of things that may not be congenial to his 
natural aptitude. And a smattering of accom- 
plishments, which too often passes for education, 
gives no real training, and often also produces 
a very offensive type such as Mark Pattison in 
his Memoirs protests against in the young Ox- 
ford which the present system tends to turn 
out. ' From showy lectures, from manuals, from 
attractive periodicals, the youth is put in pos- 
session of ready-made opinions on every con- 
ceivable subject, a crude mass of matter which 



136 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

he is taught to regard as real knowledge. 
Swollen with this puffy and unwholesome diet 
he goes forth into the world, regarding himself 
like the infant in the nursery as the centre of 
all things, the measure of the universe. He 
thinks he can evince his superiority by freely 
distributing sneers and scoffs upon all that 
does not agree with the set of opinions which 
he happens to have adopted from imitation, 
from fashion, or from chance. Having no root 
in itself, such a type of character is liable to be- 
come an easy prey to any popular charlatanism 
or current fanaticism.' 

The value of a special life-work is that it 
presents a subject that a man is called upon 
to master. The bread and butter sciences, those 
by which men earn their living, do not deserve 
the sneers so commonly passed upon them, as 
if they had no place in what is called a liberal 
education. Devotion to one's special work 
brings a strength to both mind and character 
which cannot be otherwise obtained. It is 
always a good thing for a young man to peg 
out a field for himself, which he sets himself to 
master, even though it be a narrow field. The 
serious man feels that he must limit himself 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 137 

to make the most of himself. There is a per- 
ennial source of strength in the simplicity of a 
definite purpose. The first secret of all art and 
life is to learn the limitations of both and to 
obey them. The really great man in science or 
literature or art is the man who first of all has 
mastered his own branch of work and refuses 
to be tempted away to other attractive regions. 
A definite aim persistently pursued gives both 
strength and dignity to a life. More than 
ever men feel that they cannot dissipate their 
energies. Specialisation has come to stay, for 
it cannot be avoided if knowledge is to be at all 
thorough. Sound and complete mastery of a 
subject implies a deliberate disregard of other 
branches of knowledge. Of course this means 
that we are menaced by the danger of becoming 
one-sided in our faculties, and even narrow in 
our sympathy. We need to remember that 
education is designed to make men of us, and 
not merely to make us capable business or pro- 
fessional men. It is here that culture tells, in 
presenting its ideal that the end of life is to be, 
and not merely to get or succeed. 

It is found in every industry that it pays 
better for workers to confine themselves to 



138 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

doing one thing. A man who some years ago 
would have been a general blacksmith engaged 
in all the branches of that trade, will now perhaps 
do nothing but shoe horses or hammer nails. 
Division of labour, or specialising of function, 
have become essential in modern industry. It 
is even a tendency of our civilisation to divide 
men into classes, and especially the two great 
classes of those whose work is almost exclusively 
manual and those whose work is intellectual. 
The drawbacks are obvious, seen in our factory 
system with its monotony of occupation, its 
suppression of the individual, who becomes a 
minute fraction of the whole. Much of the 
work is dwarfing, as for example that of the 
man who does one small operation in the pro- 
cess of sharpening a pin, or that of the girl who 
sticks labels on boxes all the day and every 
day. In hardly any modern industry does one 
man begin and finish an article, and thus much 
of the old artisan's pride in turning out a com- 
plete and workmanlike job is lost. There may 
be some satisfaction in the increased facility 
acquired, the ease with which a movement is 
repeated, but all must admit that the system 
is narrowing to the man as compared with the 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 139 

older ways. Here it may be said with emphasis 
that if these conditions are necessary and per- 
manent, as they seem to be, then there is all 
the more reason why the rest of life should be 
spent amid broader interests. Many men feel 
that their daily work does not call out the best 
that is in them. It is so constant and invari- 
able that it has become purely mechanical. They 
are not asked to think, and all that they need 
do at the best in earning their daily bread is to 
use one little lobe of their brain. The great 
condemnation of much of our industrial life is its 
deadly monotony. But even so, without touching 
commercial conditions, there is at least a partial 
escape open to every man. The larger intellec- 
tual life in one or other of its forms offers a 
refuge and an antidote. 

The tendency to which we have referred is not 
confined to our industrial conditions, but is true 
of all conditions. It is seen in the sphere of 
learning, in the professions, and literature and art 
and science. No lawyer pretends to a complete 
knowledge of law. Law has grown complex with 
all the complexity of society, and we find a man 
specialising in railway law, in commercial law, 
and the like. In medicine the same tendency is 



140 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

seen. The general practitioner, who was physi- 
cian and surgeon, and dentist and oculist, gives 
place to men who have made themselves distin- 
guished in one department, specialists on eye or 
ear ; or even a surgeon will practically do one 
sort of operation alone, acquiring a skill and 
deftness and unerring accuracy in his work 
impossible to any but a specialist. The danger 
here too is to forget the whole in the part, and 
treat a patient not as a living man, but as a 
combination of organs. Yet it is a great gain to 
medicine at large, extending the bounds of know- 
ledge in that profession. In the same way the 
whole field of knowledge is partitioned out and 
subdivided. No longer can any single mind 
profess to take all knowledge for its province. 
The time when a man felt himself able to write a 
commentary on the whole Bible has passed, or is 
passing. A Greek scholar must be content to 
leave to others the mastery of Hebrew. Only on 
one subject or a department of a subject can a 
man be an authority. Only to one class of work 
or a branch of that can he give his life with the 
best results. 

We may think that in some cases this limita- 
tion of work is carried too far, as with the scholar 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 141 

who died regretting that he had not devoted his 
life to the dative case. This type of scholar is 
no modern appearance merely. Montaigne de- 
scribes the type in his day : ' This man whom 
about midnight, when others take their rest, thou 
seest come out of his study meagre-looking, with 
eyes thrilling, phlegmatic, squalid and spauling, 
dost thou think that plodding on his books he 
doth seek how he shall become an honester man, 
or more wise or more content ? There is no such 
matter. He will either die in his pursuit, or teach 
posterity the measure of Plautus' verse and the 
true orthography of a Latin word.' On the other 
hand, it has to be remembered that many promis- 
ing young lives have come to nothing for want of 
a concentrated purpose. It is true that many a 
man has escaped being a great man, as some one 
says, by splitting into two middling ones. Great 
talents are often dissipated in a multiplicity of 
interests, when a man with a talent for concen- 
tration and perseverance will leave his mark in 
one sphere of activity or in one branch of a 
subject. Giardini, when asked how long it would 
take to learn to play on the fiddle, replied that it 
would take twelve hours a day for twenty years. 
All men who have been great in their own line 



142 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

have had serious views of their duty towards it, 
and of the immense demands it makes on its 
followers. And it may be taken as an axiom 
that the man who gives up his whole time and 
thought to a pursuit will commonly taste some 
measure of success. Restriction of effort is part 
of the necessity of the case with all of us. To 
make much of life we must give our chief strength 
to one or two pursuits. But this subdivision, 
besides the danger to which we have referred of 
narrowness, has also the danger of taking the 
trees for the wood, never rising to the general 
from the mass of the particular. 

The culture of the body is the perfection of its 
health, by which a man lives and works with 
ease, not sacrificing eye for ear or hand for foot. 
It means a balance of physical power, along with 
a development of any particular and special 
capacity. A man whose gift lies in delicacy of 
touch, by which his fingers can do the nicest 
mechanical operations, is in duty to the com- 
munity bound to use his gift and make that his 
work. But in duty to himself, and ultimately 
also to the community, he is bound not to neglect 
the rest of him to get an abnormal delicacy of 
touch. For even the exactcst fingers lose nerve 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 143 

when the body loses health. To preserve the 
requisite balance is the task of the body. It is 
so with the mind also. Mental culture is the 
perfection of intellectual health. As manual 
workers have their one department, so brain 
workers to be truly successful must have their 
one sphere. Here also an unhealthy mental 
condition may arise from narrowness. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes has a character in The Poet at 
the Breakfast Table who gave up his life to 
the study of beetles. He was a Coleopterist, and 
had no scientific interest in any living things, 
even crawling things, but beetles. Even that 
sphere was too large for his minute study, and he 
specialised further and only claimed to be an 
authority on a special kind of beetle. He was 
a Coleopterist who was a Scarabeeist. He had a 
mild interest in the Lepidoptera, butterflies and 
moths ; but life was too short for him to really 
know anything but beetles. The value of such 
quiet, painstaking work in every branch of human 
knowledge can hardly be overestimated. But 
there is no reason why the man should be dwarfed. 
A man can take a saner and truer and more 
scientific view of beetles who does not altogether 
give up his soul to them. Sir Joshua Reynolds 



144 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

used to say that a man who is at the head of a 
profession is above it. 

The advocates of an unmitigated specialism 
argue that the broadening of interests must lead 
to superficiality, but often what appears to be 
superficial is really the ample background of a 
rich and ripe mind. We appreciate the value 
of this breadth of training if we want a true 
judgment on a particular question ; for we find 
a largeness of view and a dispassionateness of 
mind which alone come from wide knowledge. 
Every man also who has lived the intellectual 
life discovers how subjects merge into each 
other, how separate sciences are branches of 
the one science. The student whose mind is 
full of a subject finds help everywhere; almost 
every book he reads seems to have bearings on 
his subject, and no branch of knowledge comes 
amiss. It is surely possible after all to avoid 
the two extremes — that of a man who gives 
up the general for the particular, like our 
amusing friend the Coleopterist, and that of a 
man who lives with vacuous general interests 
and with no hold of particular knowledge. The 
ideal certainly is the general along with the 
special — knowledge of many, mastery of one. 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 145 

The practical difficulty is that in some spheres 
the demands are so insistent that a man fears 
to undertake anything outside of his work. This 
one thing he must do to preserve the force of his 
special capacity. The fear is often ungrounded, 
as a generous culture should really aid and not 
hinder the technical skill. We must not forget 
that in a very true sense a broad culture helps 
even in the special spheres of activity, for it 
feeds and refreshes the mind. 

'Mass and meat hinder no man' — that is, it is 
not waste of time to do what will in the end aid 
the capacity for working. There is great truth 
in the advice that we must do more things than 
one in order to do that one well. A genuine 
love of intellectual things keeps the mind fresh 
and open to influences other than those our own 
pursuits bring. By broadening the range of our 
knowledge we increase the measure of our sym- 
pathy and give new point to our appreciation. 
It corrects the narrowness of our special work 
and the deficiencies of character which our special 
work often fosters. We come back with new zest 
and strength to our definite tasks from every 
excursion into the larger world of life and 
thought. ' Many tastes, one hobby ' is an old 



146 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

and very good adage, especially if the one 
hobby be our life's work. The many tastes 
bring relief and refreshment, and send us with 
renewed power to our work. Life can renew 
itself from many springs and drink from many 
a brook by the way. Every noble enlargement 
of thought and experience should enrich our 
capacity even for special work. 

Gounod used to say to his music pupils, 'Be 
wider than your calling.' He practised it 
himself, as can be seen in the breadth of his 
literary and artistic and other interests, the fine 
flavour of which the keen ear can note in his 
music. Most of our great musical composers 
have been men of varied culture and wide general 
education. Mendelssohn especially was a man 
of almost prodigious versatility — an Admirable 
Crichton in his many-sided talents and accom- 
plishments. The more varied the intellectual 
resources are, and the wider the range of the 
mind, the more chance there is for a rich harvest 
in the special line, say, of music. Of course 
there have been exceptions where the native 
genius has made light of disabilities, and has 
perhaps brought a certain freshness and origi- 
nality most welcome to a sophisticated age. 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 147 

Great talent for any art can overcome a pretty 
big handicap in the race. At the same time, 
a lack of culture always hampers a man in some 
direction, and keeps him from the wide appeal to 
all classes of society, and it certainly limits his 
equipment. A lack of culture nearly always 
carries with it a lack of self-criticism ; for the 
material for true criticism is wanting. Many 
a man has spent his strength attempting to do 
something which has been done already, or, what 
is worse, something which has been amply tried 
and has been proved false. He suffers from lack 
of the general education that at least would have 
enabled him to choose his tasks with wisdom. 
On the other hand, it must be admitted that a 
very extensive culture is inclined to give a certain 
pedantry, and, perhaps, a coldness of treatment 
to an art. That, and the danger of the con- 
ventional, are its temptations. But in the long 
run, a broad and generous culture in touch with 
the great human interests will give a man a 
deeper insight into his own work, and by relating 
his own small field to the broad acres of know- 
ledge will enrich it indefinitely. The claim of 
culture for a complete healthy development of 
the whole man comes with great point to us. It 



148 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

means the conscious training of the mind by 
which the best results possible for the individual 
are reached. We do not fail to recognise a 
cultured opinion on any subject, whether we 
quite agree with it or not. We feel it to be sane 
and comprehensive, not the fruit of narrowness 
or conceit, but the calm judgment of a trained 
mind. It may be true that civilisation demands 
from us an ever-increasing specialism of function, 
but, asks Schiller, ' Can it be intended that man 
should neglect himself for any particular design ? 
Ought nature to deprive us, by its design, of 
a perfection which Reason, by its own, prescribes 
to us ? Then it must be false that the develop- 
ment of single faculties makes the sacrifice of 
totality necessary ; or, if indeed the law of Nature 
presses so heavily, it becomes us to restore, by a 
higher art, this totality in our nature which art 
has destroyed.' 

The one great consolation for the increasing 
specialism of function in modern life is that it is 
a gain for society at large and for knowledge in 
general. The individual may suffer, but the 
larger life is enriched, and through that even the 
individual gains. Social progress depends on 
this narrowing of personal opportunity. When 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 149 

a single man did everything for himself he 
probably had a more all-round development, but 
civilisation was at a standstill. There could be 
little general social advance without the appor- 
tioning of special spheres of work and interest. 
The division of labour means greater complexity 
of society. Herein lies the great compensa- 
tion for the specialism which in some ways we 
are compelled to deplore. We need to take 
larger views than of any self-advantage or even 
self-culture, and look upon ourselves as part 
of a great organic whole, serving a useful func- 
tion in the life of the world. The unit is 
no longer the individual, but the race. We 
have each a contribution to make, a place to 
fill, a work to perform. The selfish life is the 
one damning offence. If the individual withers 
that the race may grow, if social progress de- 
pends on our becoming more than ever a little 
bit of the great machine, we can turn even this 
necessity into a great privilege, and can bring 
into our lives a new breadth of view which itself 
means culture. Our ideal will become the con- 
secration of intellect and of all capacity by which 
it is dedicated to service. This consecration 
will save us from pettiness and will extend our 



150 CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 

vision. It is enough for the eye that it serves 
the best life of a man : it should be enough for a 
man that he is able to serve in some fashion the 
best life of the world. Childish vanity of one's 
own gift, or insolent contempt of the gifts of 
others, become impossible ; for we will see how 
wide and varied service may be. In the richness 
of human life as a whole we will partake and get 
our share of the general gains. If we are con- 
sciously consecrating ourselves, we will grow into 
some largeness of nature. If we see the true 
nobility of service, and are humbly desirous of 
finding a place to serve, all petty pride in our own 
gifts or all fretful repining for the lack of them 
will pass from us. We will gladly see the place 
for all sorts of true work in every sphere of 
activity. It takes many kinds of men to make a 
world. We see how eye and ear and foot and 
hand in the social body have their place and 
their duties and their rights. We see the need 
for, and the dignity of, all true work of every kind. 
Commerce, industry, science, art, literature, are all 
contributing to the good of the whole. To have 
attained this point of view is itself to have at- 
tained culture, which sees the place of the part 
in the whole. There is room for the scholar and 



CULTURE AND SPECIALISM 151 

the statesman, the artist and the artisan, the man 
of business and the poet — 

When God helps all the workers for His world, 
The singers shall have help of Him, not last. 

There is no culture like this generous tolerance, 
and broad tender sympathy, which come from 
the consecrated view of life. 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 



'To see a world in a grain of sand, 
And a heaven in a wild flower, 
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 
And Eternity in an hour.' 

— William Blake. 



CHAPTER VI 

CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

TMAGINATION as a faculty has suffered from 
-*■ both inaccuracy of language and inaccuracy 
of thought. In common speech it is largely used 
for the unreal and often for the untrue. We 
use it colloquially to mean baseless and fanciful 
things, and even erroneous thoughts. We say 
that a man's troubles are imaginary, as much as 
to say that they do not exist. It suffers also 
more than the ordinary fate of language, which 
is always in danger of being rubbed down and 
vulgarised and emptied of its original meaning. 
Our prevalent inaccuracy of thought adds an- 
other misapprehension. With our materialistic 
standard we judge things by their appearance, 
and the things which do not appear are assumed 
not to exist. We call material things the real, 
and the ideal we call an imagination, meaning 
that it is something unreal. But the material is 

J 55 



156 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

after all the fleeting and transitory, while the 
unsubstantial is the truly permanent. The per- 
manent thing in everything is the unseen part 
of it. The sound of the word dies upon the 
passing wind, and the thought it carries lives. 
The outward form of music is momentary, 
and the beautiful conception remains. The 
canvas fades and the stone crumbles, but the 
vision in the soul of the artist dies not. The 
world of sense and sight and sound is only 
appearance, but the thought of it is fact. The 
material changes ever ; but the spiritual, the as- 
piration, the ideal, the imagination lives in endless 
life. 

Imagination is a necessary part of man's equip- 
ment, and is capable of culture, and therefore it is 
our duty to give it room and opportunity to grow. 
Even when we prize imagination and make it the 
test of the highest forms of art, we are inclined 
to omit the duty of its culture. We think it to 
be like genius, a gift which cannot be cultivated. 
But even genius is not a difference in kind, but in 
degree. It does not mean another sort of flesh 
and blood, another sort of head and heart. It is 
a finer quality of nerve and brain. Indeed it 
may be said to be a deeper and truer and more 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 157 

profound imaginative faculty. It is true that 
some have more than others, but that is no 
reason why the less gifted should despair of 
the culture of what they really possess. Some 
men have more and better knit muscle than 
others, but most of us make shift to walk some- 
how, and on occasion to run, though not perhaps 
with the ease and grace of a great athlete. If we 
have no imagination at all, then it must be a lost 
art or an atrophied power, for every child has it. 
We see it in almost every nursery game, in their 
make-belief, in their pretty fancies about animals, 
in their charming acting of parts, in their instinct 
for the dramatic, in their love of fairy tales. 
Romance is a child's natural food. Watch a 
little maiden playing with her dolls, investing 
them with life, composing dialogues for them ; 
or watch a boy fancying himself the engineer of 
a railway train, or the general of an army ; or 
notice their complete withdrawal from the world 
as they live through every incident of a story ; 
and you must admit that imagination is the ear- 
liest and the strongest faculty of childhood. It 
is the age of fancy and mystery and poetry. A 
mother reading a poem to a, boy of six said, 'I 
am afraid you can't understand it, dear,' and 



158 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

was promptly rebuked for her unbelief when he 
replied, ' Oh, yes, I can very well, if only you 
would not explain,' 1 The poem brought its own 
train of thought to him, its own suggestions, its 
own series of images. It was not her train of 
thought, and hers only disturbed his. We often 
hurt the tender feelings of a child, and help to 
kill the imaginative faculty by our scepticism and 
cynicism and impatience. It is as natural a gift 
as reason, and has its part to play in the making 
of a true life. When it is lost, and a man be- 
comes a literalist, we appreciate what a gift it 
is. The literalist will solemnly argue about a 
joke, and ponderously explain a fancy. He 
swells the great army of the world's bores. We 
have all met the matter-of-fact man, like the one 
Douglas Jerrold tells of, who, if you talked to 
him of Jacob's ladder, would ask the number of 
the steps. 

Imagination is one of the finest gifts of mind 
and can do much to make life happy. We have 
a wonderful power of losing self in ideal scenes, 
and can transform dull reality with beauty. 
Amid the commonplace or even the painful, we 
give rein to imagination and are off to fairer 

1 Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 56. 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 159 

realms. This power of putting ourselves in 
other circumstances gives us a magic touch, 
which is a real remedy for many an evil of our 
lot. Imagination also is helpful to all the other 
faculties. Even humour seems dependent on it ; 
for both the pathos and the humour of life 
are due to the discrepancy between the real 
and the ideal. We see the real, and through 
imagination we see the ideal, and the contrast 
is sometimes pathetic and sometimes humorous. 
All poetry and all art are children of imagina- 
tion. To cut off the imaginative life would be 
to make the world poorer to us all. Imagina- 
tion is the window which lets in light to the 
sombre house of life. As a rule, we have not 
enough window-space to keep life moderately 
healthy. There is a light that never was on 
sea or land, and the man who sees it can never 
rest in the sordidness of the usual. He has seen 
enough of the vision to keep him from losing 
his heart to what is base. If through the pas- 
sion of a great ideal or through the vision of a 
beautiful future he misses what the world calls 
success, his life is not necessarily a failure. 
'That man,' said Lessing, 'makes noble ship- 
wreck who is lost in seeking worlds.' If the 



160 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

imaginative life can save the soul from acqui- 
escence in the sordid, it well merits all the 
culture we can give it. The highest accuracy 
of impression and even the truest accuracy of 
history are often attained by the poet rather 
than by the word-grubbing scholar. Truth is 
not formal but vital, and if the poet's version be 
not exact in detail, it may be true in spirit. 
Fact may be correctly stated in the fullest detail 
and yet be false. 'The imagination may be 
compared to Adam's dream : he awoke and found 
it truth.' 1 That is why the seer and the poet 
are needed to interpret life ; for they get to 
the heart of an incident when others are only 
fumbling at the fringe. The highest truths are 
not reached by analysis, and the deepest appeal 
is not made to logic. We may dissect and dis- 
solve and analyse and get at many a hidden 
fact by the way, while the secret has vanished. 
The life and meaning and flavour and vital 
breath elude prosaic methods. To imagination 
we owe all our creative arts, poetry and painting 
and music. 

Without it even science itself would be a 
gathering of observations and chaotic facts lack- 

i Keats. 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 161 

ing order or meaning or law. The prosaic 
observer may make the most careful observa- 
tions, but it needs a higher faculty to set the 
observations in their true relations and to make 
order and beauty out of the mass. Most of the 
great discoveries in science have been made by 
this power to imagine unseen conditions. The 
mere observer of nature is smothered by details, 
a confused crowd of phenomena, and it needs 
the man of inductive and intuitive genius to 
reach the natural law which includes and ex- 
plains them. There must be in scientific research 
accurate observation and careful arrangement 
of facts, but every step in advance is attained 
by a great imaginative effort which takes an 
unproved working hypothesis and applies it to 
the facts. A whole chapter might be written 
on the place of imagination in the sphere of the 
exact sciences, and on the mistakes which have 
been made here through deficient imagination. 
All great scientists have had something of the 
poetic vision. The Copernican astronomy, the 
law of gravitation, all wide syntheses of the facts 
of nature, began with assumptions and were 
the fruit of scientific imagination. The most 
fertile work of our day in the region of biology 



1 62 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

has been done on the hypothesis of evolution. 
To banish imagination from science would be 
to deprive it of its chief instrument. 

Morality, also, divorced from it becomes mere 
legalism, the formal working of a puppet-show. 
Prosaic morality means either moderatism or 
pharisaism, unattractive, and in the true sense 
unreal. As Thackeray with one of his keen 
thrusts of genial cynicism says, 'The bad do 
much harm, but no one knows how much evil 
the good do.' There are endless illustrations 
in this region of how the letter kills and the 
spirit alone can give life. As for theology, it 
has too often been cursed by the barrenness of 
the commonplace. Unimaginative theology has 
been a fearful weight on the Church. In ex- 
egesis and interpretation and exhortation, an 
ounce of poetry often outvalues a bushel of 
some other theological qualities. Sanctified im- 
agination is the great ally of religion. It gives 
the wings for the higher flight of the spirit 
of man. The world will never be without 
its witness to the unseen. The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, convincing the world of God. 
If we had more imagination we would have 
more faith. We would not mistake the place 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 163 

and power of religion, and we would never get 
very far from God — 

As German Boehme never cared for plants 
Until it happed, a- walking in the fields, 
He noticed all at once that plants could speak, 
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. 
That day the daisy had an eye indeed. 1 

Thus the value of the imagination is not 
restricted to the poet and novelist and dramatist, 
but is needed for all forms of intellectual effort. 
It is of use to the historian and the statesman, 
no less than to the man of science and the 
theologian. In the reconstruction of a scene of 
the past, in revealing the steps by which a social 
or political change came about, how institu- 
tions grew and withered, how empires rose 
and fell, the social conditions of a former age, 
all these need an imaginative representation. 
The most careful sifting of evidence and verify- 
ing of fact, and the most formidable array of 
authorities, will not reconstruct for us any scene 
of history without the illumination of imagina- 
tion. The statesman, too, must use this gift 
if he is to be more than an opportunist. He 
must have some vision of the large issues at 

1 Browning, Men and Women — ' Transcendentalism.' 



1 64 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

stake, and make some forecast of state policy 
if he would have any sort of permanent success. 
Philosophy would have been saved from some 
of its errors if it had been sometimes a little 
less prosaic. Materialism as a philosophical 
theory, as well as a practical scheme of living, 
is due to a want of imagination. It shuts the 
eyes to the whole course of man's religious 
history, and to the spiritual facts which are as 
truly facts as any on the plane of material 
science. Romanes, who gave his life to science, 
wrote as one of his last judgments: 'It is much 
more easy to disbelieve than to believe. This 
is obvious on the side of reason, but it is also 
true on that of spirit, for to disbelieve is in 
accordance with environment or custom, while 
to believe necessitates a spiritual use of the 
imagination. For both these reasons, very few 
unbelievers have any justification, either intel- 
lectual or spiritual, for their own unbelief. 
Unbelief is usually due to indolence, often to 
prejudice, and never a thing to be proud of.' 1 

In the conduct of ordinary life we are more 
indebted to imagination than perhaps we think. 
Memory is a form of imagination, without which 

1 Thoughts on Religion, p. 144. 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 165 

the past would be a blank. It is reproductive 
imagination, the power of reproducing a mental 
image of what has occurred. The creative im- 
agination is the faculty of the poet, the power of 
making new images, of combining into beautiful 
forms the ideal aspects of life — 

And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shapes. 

It may be said that the differences of intellect in 
men are differences of imagination. To all who 
live at the same period there is a great common 
body of thought. We have most things in 
common, and variety is created by the way 
we use our heritage. It is imagination which 
gives distinction and colour and individuality 
to thought. A man takes of the common 
stock and appropriates it, makes it his own 
by investing it with his imagination, as Shake- 
speare took the plots and stories and even the 
plays of his predecessors and made everything 
' suffer a sea change into something rich and 
strange,' or as Burns took the songs of his 
country and re-created them by the heat of 
his own heart. 

Still further in ordinary life we see that the 



1 66 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

divine quality of sympathy is the fruit of im- 
agination, by which we put ourselves in the 
place of others and feel with them and there- 
fore for them. Shelley in his Defe?ice of Poetry 
said, ' A man to be greatly good must imagine 
intensely and comprehensively ; he must put 
himself into the place of another and of many 
others ; the pains and pleasures of his species 
must become his own.' Most of men's cruelty 
and callousness is due to lack of imagination, 
to an incapacity to understand feelings different 
from our own. We are not able to project 
ourselves into the situation of others, or we 
could never fail of sympathy. The world cannot 
understand a poet going half mad with grief 
and indignation at the sorrows and shames of 
a butchered Armenia, because the world has 
too dense and dull a soul to enable it to really 
appreciate the deeds of horror. True imagina- 
tion is the great ally on the side of God to 
fight against selfishness. We would love our 
neighbour as ourselves, if only we could imagine 
him as easily as we can think of ourselves. 
Sympathy begins by an imaginative getting 
out of self and getting into the place of another. 
We become him for the time. If he is in pain, 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 167 

we have some idea of what he is suffering. We 
feel what we imagine he feels. We can be 
accurately said to share his experience. Much 
of the smallness and meanness of life results 
from narrowing the horizon and restricting the 
vision to the bounds of self. Our hearts would 
be enlarged if our imagination were kept bright 
and active. We sympathise with that which 
we are able to picture to ourselves. To see a 
child run over in the street fills us with grief, 
and with desire to help. We know theoretically 
that children in India in a time of famine must 
suffer much greater pain ; or we know that in 
all our cities the cry of the children goes up 
to God for their joyless, woful youth — we 
know it when some specially bad case is un- 
earthed by the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Children, — but we have not enough 
imagination to give us more than a spasmodic 
sympathy in both cases. Imagination is thus 
the great social faculty which binds us to each 
other. It needs culture, and can be cultivated 
as all other faculties are cultivated — by use. 
We must not steel our hearts against the joy 
and sorrow of others. Try, for example, to 
realise the feelings of your friends and intimates 



1 68 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

and neighbours; try to picture to yourself what 
a certain word or a certain line of action will 
mean to them ; try to imagine how you can 
bring light or gloom, pleasure or pain, and 
you will develop tact, which is just the faculty 
of touchy fineness of sensation, which will keep 
you from hurting any human soul. 

In religion there is room for the use of 
imagination. It is that which enables us to 
see past the forms and externals of faith and 
worship to the spirit within. All kinds of 
idolatry are due to too little, and not too 
much, imagination. In the early church an 
image was only a symbol, and the spiritual 
man never dreamed of worshipping the image 
but only used it to assist him to think of the 
reality for which the symbol stood. But the 
prosaic soul soon mistook the form for the sub- 
stance. Religion always suffers from the lack 
of imagination. If we had more of the poetic 
power of faith, we would see without needing 
so much prompting and directing. If imagina- 
tion is as the window which lets in light to 
the house, then sanctified imagination is as the 
coloured windows of a great cathedral which 
flood the place with glory and stain the noble 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 169 

pillars. The high realms of faith can only be 
explored by the sanctified imagination. Imag- 
ination gives wings to thought, enables it to 
soar, and keeps it from grovelling in the dust. 
Faith is glorified imagination, which embodies 
the unseen and gives shape to the unknown. 

Think of Christ's use of the imagination. He 
used it continually in His teaching, which was 
ever the poetic expression of truth. He spoke 
in parables in which all nature is made to 
preach, the corn and the lilies, and the trees 
and the birds. The great lesson of His teach- 
ing and the great purpose of His life was to get 
men to imagine the infinite love of God. If we 
would strive to comprehend that wondrous con- 
ception, if we would give ourselves to the thought 
of it, if we would steep our souls in it, if we 
would live in it by day and dream of it by 
night, we would keep God in our lives. If we 
would but imagine the love of God, dwell on 
it, hug the thought of it to our heart, life 
would be a home to us instead of a mere 
shelter. The house of life would be a home, 
not bare walls, but a place where love dwells ; 
and sanctified imagination would hang in the 
chambers of the house pictures of the good, 



170 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

the beautiful, the true. It is the vision and 
not the possession which gives life its value, the 
quest and not the conquest, the attempt and not 
the attainment, the dream and not the fulfilment, 
the aspiration and not the achievement. 

This spiritual imagination can be cultivated 
as poetic imagination can be. The culture of 
the imagination is the culture of the ideal. It 
is the culture of faith and the culture of 
prayer. If we imagine the love of God, if we 
pray for the mind of the Master, if in every 
difficulty we stop to think what He would have 
done and said, if we make His teaching and 
will and life the test and example, if we keep 
ever the vision of Christ before us, we will 
live the higher imaginative life, not always 
down among the dust and sordidness of the 
world, but sometimes among the angels and 
the spirits of just men made perfect. It purifies 
passion and cleanses the heart even to go with 
Him in fancy through His earthly life, and to 
realise that He is the same to-day in nature 
and in purpose, to live with Him over again 
in His life in Galilee and Jerusalem, to follow 
Him from Nazareth to Capernaum, to Bethany, 
to Samaria, to Gethsemane, to make it all real 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 171 

to us, and then realise that He is as He was, 
and so practise the presence of Christ with us 
to-day. ' Methought I was as if I had seen Him 
born,' says John Bunyan in Grace Abounding, 
'as if I had seen Him grow up, as if I had seen 
Him walk through this world from the cradle 
to the cross, to which also when He came I 
saw how gently He gave Himself to be hanged 
and nailed on it for my sins and wicked doing. 
Also as I was musing on this His progress 
it dropped on my spirit that He was ordained 
for the slaughter. When I have considered 
also the truth of His resurrection, I have seen 
as if He had leaped out of the grave's mouth 
for joy that He was risen again and had got 
the conquest over our dreadful foes.' Browning 
might have been translating these words of 
Bunyan into poetry, as he was certainly ex- 
pressing the same thought in the passage — 

Oft have I stood by Thee — 
Have I been keeping lonely watch by Thee — 
In the damp night by weeping Olivet, 
Or leaning on Thy bosom, proudly less, 
Or dying with Thee on the lonely cross, 
Or witnessing Thy bursting from the tomb. 

There is another side to the consideration of 
this high subject which shows us the need of 



172 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

wise training and guidance. Like the other great 
gifts of man, imagination has suffered in the 
house of its friends. There is no human faculty 
which has been looked more askance on and been 
more condemned. The attack has come from 
three very commanding quarters. It has been 
carried on in the name of morality and philosophy 
and religion. 

Morally, the imagination is seen to be the 
seat of all evil. Sin is conceived there and 
harboured there before it is brought out into 
the open as full-blown fact. A great moral 
writer in his impeachment of the imagination 
has declared, ' Here is the devil's lurking-place, 
the very nest of foul and delusive spirits.' To 
the moralist, therefore, it often appears as the 
seat of evil and only evil, the breeding-place of 
all the sins. Temptation comes by presenting 
to the imagination in a pleasing and alluring 
fashion sinful acts. The psychology of sin is 
thus stated by St. James, ' Every man is tempted 
when he is drawn away of his own lust and en- 
ticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth 
forth sin.' Evil enters the mind by suggestion, 
by pl a y m £ on tnc f an cy. It captures the will 
and the heart through the imagination. Evil 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 173 

thoughts, dallied with and made welcome, 
blossom into evil deeds. 

By the philosopher also imagination sometimes 
is taken to be the one and inveterate foe of reason, 
keeping back the progress of truth by creating 
a fanciful region where a man can find a spurious 
peace from troublesome thought. Pascal calls it 
' that deceitful part of man, the mistress of error 
and falsity, the more knavish that she is not 
always so, or she would be an infallible rule of 
truth if only she were an infallible rule of lying.' 
To him it is a proud potentate who loves to rule 
and dominate over its enemy, reason. When 
reason would make a man unhappy, and by the 
very pain lead to truer thinking and sounder 
living, imagination will sometimes bring content- 
ment and so triumph over reason. Buckle, in his 
History of Civilisation, while admitting that in a 
complete, well balanced mind the imagination 
and the understanding have each their respective 
parts to play and are auxiliary to each other, 
thinks it undoubtedly true that in a majority of 
instances the understanding is too weak to curb 
the imagination and restrain its dangerous 
licence. He believes that the tendency of ad- 
vancing civilisation is to remedy this dispropor- 



174 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

tion and to invest the reasoning powers with 
authority at the expense of the imagination. 

By the theologian also it has been condemned 
as the cause of the delusions and the lying visions 
and the ecstatic impressions which lead men 
astray into all sorts of unstrung and hysterical 
states. Jonathan Edwards speaks strongly of the 
delusions in religion fostered by trusting to the 
impressions made on the imagination, and thinks 
that though often at first it seems to beget a per- 
suasion of the truth of invisible things, yet the ulti- 
mate tendency is to draw men off from the word 
of God and to cause them to reject true religion. 

Now, there would not be such a remarkable 
condemnation if there were not some ground of 
accusation. It would not be easy to account for 
so virulent a charge by so many and so great 
thinkers, if there were not facts which give colour 
to it even though it be accepted as a one-sided 
statement. There is at least enough to make 
us convinced that, while imagination has a true 
and strong place in life and religion, and while 
the duty of its culture is plain, there is an equal 
necessity for its adequate control. Imagination 
must of course be accepted like all the other 
qualities of mind. No alarmist talk of its danger, 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 175 

either in the name of reason or morality or re- 
ligion, can alter the fact. It can put us on our 
guard that we may avoid its abuse, but unless we 
stultify our whole intellectual life we must be 
content to possess imagination as one of the 
gifts of mind. Not only so, but, as we have seen, 
it is the highest and most precious attribute we 
have. No danger of its misuse could warrant 
anything like an attempt at extinction of this 
faculty. Even if it were possible, the policy of 
repression in itself is a failure. Its fruits may 
sometimes be vagueness and obscurity, or ex- 
travagance and hysteria, or worse still, morbidness 
and disease. But with all our gifts we must take 
the thick and the thin together. When we call 
attention to abuse, we do not mean to deny use ; 
when we point to disease, we do not condemn 
health. The power of use implies the possibility 
of abuse. The place of imagination in art and 
life and religion is secure, and we only help to 
make it more secure when we truly discriminate ; 
and we make its culture more possible for our- 
selves and for all when we use restraint. There 
can be no true discipline and education of 
imagination without strong control of it. The 
training of the imagination is necessary for its 



176 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

own best life as well as for our character. The 
depraving effect of a corrupt imagination has 
many illustrations in every region of life. 

In this connection we naturally think first 
of the huge place which the literature of fiction 
has taken in our time. It has earned its place 
as a great instrument for the interpretation of 
life, and plays a large part in mental recreation. 
We know the value of romance when it is the 
healthy expression of a healthy imagination, but 
we cannot fail to know the blighting, polluting 
power it has when it has ceased to be healthy. 
So much so, that we can understand the mood of 
mind which makes the moralist who is a lover of 
his kind speak as though he would sweep the 
whole art from the life of a man. It is rather 
strange that in defence of evil literature, the claim 
of realism should be made on behalf of what 
is admittedly a purely imaginative art. Want 
of art is often responsible for what passes for 
realism. It is want of creative imagination, 
and that means lack of the capacity for the 
business the writers have taken in hand. They 
speak of transcripts from life, but life is not so 
mean and stupid as such art sometimes makes 
it. George Meredith, who will be accepted as a 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 177 

master, calls it ' soundings and probings of poor 
humanity which the world accepts for the very 
bottom-truth if their dredge brings up sheer 
refuse of the abominable. The world imagines 
those to be at our nature's depth who are im- 
pudent enough to expose its muddy shallows. 
It is true of its kind, though the dredging of 
nature is the miry form of art.' 1 One loves to 
think of the greatest romancist of them all, Sir 
Walter Scott, with his nobility of soul, and to 
remember that there is not a base thought, not 
an evil suggestion, not a morbid feeling, not an 
impure word in the whole magnificent array of 
volumes ; and we cannot escape the thought 
that a man's work here as elsewhere is only the 
reflection of himself, and in this case we feel that 
there is revealed a simple, brave, gentle, and 
generous heart. There is nothing so harmful in 
the world as a bad book, because it touches the 
subtlest and most delicate of our powers, the 
imagination. It leaves a scar on the heart and a 
stain on the mind. 

Our moral responsibility in connection with 
this great gift is not confined to approving or 
disapproving of the artistic work of others. 

1 Diana of the Crossways. 



178 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

Control is needed over our own imagination to 
keep it from running away with us, and becoming 
master instead of servant. If we have not a 
firm hand on the reins of imagination, one of 
two moral evils results. 

(i) We will be plagued by the sins of emptiness, 
and our life can at best be a useless dream. This 
is common in youth before the mind has force 
enough to control the fancy, and bring it into 
subjection. Many precious days and years are 
spent in dreams without any fulfilment. It is 
specially the temptation of the student, and 
often the finer the mind the more subtle the 
temptation. Many a life has been enervated 
by sinful indulgence in the pleasures of the im- 
agination, even when these are pure and innocent 
enough. All of us know men who should have 
done better work for the world than they now 
will ever do, because their powers of deciding 
and acting have been eaten away. Absent-mind- 
edness is not always the attribute of genius, but 
is oftener the fruit of idleness and feckless moon- 
ing. Most young people love to dream of them- 
selves achieving great things in some beautiful 
future, watching themselves playing a magnificent 
part as a great artist, or orator, or scholar, or 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 179 

lawyer, or man of business — the dream of a full 
theatre with applauding crowds. It is usually an 
unsanctified dream. Imagination was not given us 
for such idle and selfish fancies. Our life to-day, 
and especially our intellectual life, is cursed with 
false ambitions, and these are largely fostered 
by such self-indulgence of the imagination. 
This dream-power of projecting ourselves into 
ideal scenes, and of anticipating the future can 
be a great blessing, but becomes a positive 
weakness if it does not inspire to moral action. 
We need to be master of ourselves and of our 
faculties. We need the self-control which will 
give us a grip of ourselves, and not let life and 
its tasks slip past us. 

(2) But failure to restrain imagination rarely 
ends in such negative failure, bad as that is. Here 
also the empty house is the ready resort of the 
seven devils. Imagination uncontrolled usually 
means imagination run riot. The power we have 
of making mental pictures and calling up images 
at will means that these pictures and images may 
be evil. We cannot forget the psychology of 
temptation, how it gains foothold in the imagina- 
tion, and entices and seduces and draws away of 
its own lust. The first step in the ruin of many 



180 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

a man's life is by the indulgence of a misplaced 
curiosity. No moral catastrophe comes all of a 
sudden. It has a long history of evil imaginings, 
finding pleasure in them, giving them house-room, 
living with them and loving them. A man is a 
cheat in heart, dreaming of easy gains, before he 
becomes dishonest in act. A man is impure in 
thought before he becomes profligate in life. A 
man lets self dominate his mind before he becomes 
selfish in deed. Imagination is polluted before 
vice is born. Sin gets its secure seat in the 
soul before it comes out to view in conduct and 
habits. Self-control must begin here, because im- 
agination affects the whole man to the very finger- 
tips. Unholy thoughts end in unhallowed acts ; 
evil imaginings translate themselves into life. 

Christ in His diagnosis of sin is not content 
with mentioning its manifestations, but points to 
the baneful root. He teaches us that the genesis 
of murder is anger in the mind, and the genesis of 
adultery is lust in the eye, and the genesis of 
revenge is hardness of heart. Keep thine heart 
with diligence, for out of it arc the issues of life. 
Look well after the beginnings of evil, as it 
sneaks for its lurking place in the imagination. 
It is a terrible transformation when the house of 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 181 

life, which should be a home with order and 
cleanliness and peace, is a sepulchre which, 
though whitened without, is full of dead men's 
bones and all manner of excess. When the 
imagination is corrupt, how can the life escape 
the taint ? A man cannot take fire into his 
bosom and his clothes not be burned. If we 
would save our imagination from becoming a 
nest of foul spirits, we must determine to endure 
no evil thing before our eyes. Surely it is the 
ultimate failure to have in the house of life, 
instead of pictures of the good, the beautiful, and 
the true, a gallery of the obscene, a gallery of pic- 
tures impure and foul, humiliating the high soul 
of man, and chaining the life to a body of death. 
In addition to this need for control of imagina- 
tion in the region of morals, there is no less need 
for its control in the realm of the spiritual. An 
untutored imagination in religion is ever in 
danger of false mysticism. All true religion has 
of course a mystical heart ; for it means direct 
communion with God, and implies the open face 
and the beatific vision. But, because of this, 
delusions of all kinds are possible, and Jonathan 
Edwards' impeachment of the imagination finds 
some basis in fact. Uncontrolled imagination has 



182 CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 

led to the most fatal errors. Our Lord, who 
knew the heart of man, warned against false 
Christs and false prophets, who would show 
great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray if 
possible the very elect. St. Paul also warned 
his disciples against these very signs and lying 
wonders. We see how needful the warning was, 
when we think of the false supernaturalisms and 
mysticisms and occult arts and theosophies and 
spiritualisms that have afflicted the race since. 
Apart from all such gross delusions, it is always 
dangerous to trust too much to a susceptible 
imagination in times of religious excitement. 
We need to remember that religion does not 
depend on our states of mind and feeling, and 
that faith is not dependent on personal visions. 
The danger of paying heed to the pictures of a 
lively and excitable imagination is that it loses 
sight of the truly spiritual side of religion, and 
lays stress on what is after all only another form 
of materialism. It has also a danger to the in- 
dividual in puffing him up with conceit at the 
thought that he is favoured with a special 
revelation to himself ; and pride is the first of 
the seven deadly sins. 

There is a place in religion for sanctified 



CULTURE OF IMAGINATION 183 

imagination, but it must be restrained by the 
practical needs of living, and restrained most of 
all by the endeavour to keep step with Christ. 
Whatever is inconsistent with His teaching, and 
out of harmony with the simplicity of His life 
and the beauty of His spirit, must be dismissed. 
Idle curiosity about the mysteries of providence, 
empty speculation about a future life, receive no 
support from His example. They are an insult 
to true faith, which among its spiritual contents 
includes patience. To be a Christian is to sub- 
mit the whole life to Christ, judging all things by 
His spirit. Safety for the imaginative life is got 
by this submission, which saves it from excess, 
guards it from evil, and uses it to the best advan- 
tage. It is made a home of all that is fair and 
lovely in the Father's lovely world, and through 
it comes lasting pleasure in all that is good and 
beautiful and true. The life He offers is not 
emasculated and feeble, but rich and full and 
joyous, with all the world's true treasures at 
command, because we are Christ's, and Christ is 
God's. 



CULTURE OF HEART 



* Religion consists much in holy affections.' 

— Jonathan Edwards. 



CHAPTER VII 

CULTURE OF HEART 

r I ^HE mistake which many advocates of cul- 
■*■ ture have made is that they limit it to the 
sphere of intellect. Culture has thus been 
looked on as a forcing ground for prigs, devel- 
oping the superior person who is above the 
sentiments and prejudices which move the mass 
of men. Such a man looks with contemptuous 
pity on the ordinary motives of human action, 
the feelings and passions and instincts and en- 
thusiasms of the vulgar crowd. He sits above 
the tumult and criticises in a cynical way, pro- 
fessing to make reason the guide of life, while 
others are content with feeling. The need for 
reason and the duty of thought we have admitted, 
but if emotion can go astray, reason can also 
be a will-of-the-wisp. It can be as much the 
plaything of prejudice as even sentiment. To 
set it up as the infallible rule would put the 
world more at sixes and sevens than ever; for 

187 



1 88 CULTURE OF HEART 

as a matter of fact men are not solely, if even 
chiefly, united by reason. All the permanent 
relationships of life are held together by the 
affections rather than by the intellect. The 
culture which neglects the facts and forces of 
human nature other than mental is not culture ; 
for it is condemned by its onesidedness. If men 
were isolated individuals there might be some 
excuse for such narrowness. But human nature 
is essentially social : men are developed only in 
society. So, even for the sake of the individual 
himself, culture must be social in its objects and 
seek the good of others, and as the great nexus 
of men is not the intellect but the affections, 
there must be room for culture of the heart. 

Intellect in itself will not ennoble life. The 
very power of reason, without a corresponding 
development of the higher feelings, would only 
make man a more dangerous brute than all other 
animals. The sensual when combined with the 
intellectual results in the devilish. Shakespeare 
draws such a character for us in Iago. His 
selfish scheming, his accurate reading of the 
hearts of others so that he plays off skilfully 
their different feelings and passions against each 
other, his treachery to friend and hypocrisy to 



CULTURE OF HEART 189 

foe, his cold-blooded policy in using living men 
and women as pawns in his own game, his 
cynical contempt for what he considers the 
weakness of his victims, as when, after work- 
ing up Othello to the climax of jealousy, he 
sneers ' thus credulous fools are caught ' — all 
these make him perhaps the most consummate 
villain in literature. Iago's want of heart damns 
his intellect. This is not a mere fancy picture. 
The world has often been cursed with such a 
combination of the sensual and the intellectual. 
The history of almost every country can give 
illustrations of such men who attained power by 
trampling on the rights of men. Caesare Borgia, 
the son of his unscrupulous and only less hated 
father, Pope Alexander VI., is such an instance 
in the renaissance history of Italy. With force 
of intellect cursed by selfish ambition, a patron 
of the arts, pictured by Macchiavelli as a great 
ruler, he because of his very gifts made his 
name a terror and his memory a shame. Per- 
fidy, sacrilege, assassination, vileness unspeak- 
able, were as his daily food till men had to 
kill him like a mad dog. The mere stupid 
sensualist lacks the power to be a world-curse, 
though he blights all he touches ; but when 



190 CULTURE OF HEART 

added to that there is the cold selfishness of 
real mental power he can make his name a 
hissing. Intellect without the affections can 
create a monster. Conscience is needed to regu- 
late life, the heart is needed to guide it. Even 
when intellect is not dragged into the service 
of evil, if it is without the warmth of affection, 
it is only 

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, 
Dead perfection — no more. 

Absence of emotion does not necessarily mean, 
as we are inclined to think, the presence of 
the practical virtues, commonsense and courage. 
We imagine that coldness of temperament im- 
plies an abnormal development of wisdom and 
the best sort of prudence. It may be only 
dulness and insensibility all round. The people 
who cannot afford one single expression of 
sympathy, who are seldom kind and never 
really tender-hearted, have not necessarily even 
more commonsense than their more susceptible 
neighbours. Some men, it may be, seem for a 
time to get a clear brain from a stifled heart. 
Hardness of heart may seem necessary for some 
kinds of success, but it is not a success worth 
having. A man with very fine feelings perhaps 



CULTURE OF HEART 191 

handicaps himself in the attainment of some 
ambitions, but these ambitions are not the 
highest and the best. It is no great ideal for 
a man to be like Job's leviathan, whose 'heart is 
as firm as a stone ; yea as hard as a piece of the 
nether millstone.' The self-seeker may carve out 
a great career, may achieve wealth or position, 
may astonish by his brilliance and power, may 
make men admire him and envy him, but he 
will not make them love him. He will not 
grapple hearts to him as with bands of steel. 
Pity is the gate to influence of the highest and 
deepest sort. The empire of souls is given not 
to the clever but to the loving, not to those 
who command our attention by their force of 
brain but to those who touch us with their 
sympathy, their devotion, ' their sacrifice. The 
true test even of art in painting and literature 
is not that it inspires wonder at its cleverness 
but that it inspires a large sense of the mystery 
of the world and life, and a large tolerance and 
pity. The world is held in thrall not by the 
great conquerors and statesmen and financiers 
but by the great sentimentalists, the poets and 
prophets and mystics and saints. Men are 
melted by the example and story of all who 



192 CULTURE OF HEART 

have lived and died for men, and by the work 

of those who by their feeling have interpreted 

the dumb desires and speechless pain of the 

race. Even their mistakes are forgotten, as 

with Shelley when we know how true these 

words of his are of himself — 

I who am as a nerve o'er which do creep 
The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth. 

There is a brilliant saying of Horace Walpole, 
that this world is a comedy to those who think, 
and a tragedy to those who feel. It is also a 
true saying, but only on the surface. The 
comedy will not last long ; it will become a 
greater tragedy to those who do not feel ; for 
the only hope of a solution of the whole problem 
of existence lies in the discoveries of the heart- 
life, and the only permanent union among men 
must be found not by logic but by love. 

Now, the affections, like the other parts of our 
nature, need care and education and training. 
We seem to expect the life of the heart to go on 
of itself by what we call nature. The affections 
arc natural, but not more so than physical or 
mental health is natural. We must set before 
ourselves the aim to live the life of the heart 
constantly and continually, just as we think it a 



CULTURE OF HEART 193 

good thing to set before us the aim to live the 
life of thought. As the athlete must go into 
training for the perfection of his bodily powers, 
and as the scholar must give himself to learning 
even when the flesh rebels, so we must set our- 
selves to cultivate the affections. We need to 
encourage and develop the life of the heart by 
consistently setting before ourselves the practice 
of all true and noble sentiments. This is one of 
the implications of our original starting-point of 
the duty of proportional development. 

How can the heart-life be trained ? The pre- 
cepts are plain enough, though the practice may 
be difficult — ■ precepts such as 'be ye kind one to 
another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.' 
The sentiment of kindness is got by being kind. 
The sentiment of gentleness is got by being 
gentle, by stopping the cutting word at the teeth 
if it cannot be stopped before, by crushing down 
the harsh judgment, by replacing the cruel 
thought with a tender one, by persistently prac- 
tising kindness, by doing the generous deed, by 
speaking the encouraging word, by thinking no 
evil. This training of the Christian sentiment 
cannot be left to haphazard, but must be accepted 
deliberately as a duty, and persisted in con- 



194 CULTURE OF HEART 

stantly as a plan of life ; for if we are not 
deliberately kind, we will often be cruel if only 
through thoughtlessness. Some may have no 
opportunities of living the life of thought, but all 
have opportunities to live the life of the heart, 
by gentle courtesy to servants and dependants, 
by consideration for friends and comrades, by 
doing something and giving something to alle- 
viate human sorrow. 

De Musset said that most men have in them 
a poet who dies young. The tragedy of that 
early death, the death of fine feeling and gener- 
ous emotion ! We need continually to replenish 
the heart : the fire dies out for want of fuel. 
It is so easy to become cynical and blase. Self- 
ishness soon eats into every generous ideal 
like an acid. A cheap contempt comes easily 
when we look to the follies of men rather than 
to their sorrows, but contempt is a wrong to the 
man despised, and a wrong to human nature, and 
a wrong to our own selves. Impatience with 
others and indignation against them, if these 
feelings are not the fruit of love, are an insult to 
our common humanity. There is a satire even 
in the name of righteousness which is the devil's 
weapon ; there is an anger even in the cause of 



CULTURE OF HEART 195 

good which is sin. Charity will often disarm 
criticism by its generous refusal to throw too 
cold a light upon the infirmities of men, and 
this not through the weakness which pretends 
not to see, but because it sees more deeply and 
widely. It softens the sight because it sharpens 
the insight. It touches life tenderly and looks 
on it gently. We need to bear and forbear, 
exercise patience and tolerance and pity. We 
must learn to take the generous side in all the 
causes that emerge. Lamartine called Chris- 
tianity an insurrection of justice in favour of the 
weak. There is nothing sadder than to see 
young men always taking the cynical and 
prudential view of life, and never practising 
themselves in standing up for the weak and 
oppressed. Better to be a partisan of lost causes 
than to have the heart seared by self-interest or 
callousness. The light of generous enthusiasm 
dies out soon enough into the common light of 
day. The world's use and wont soon enough 
deprives men of their unselfish passion. In all 
the problems of our day as a nation and as a 
society, we should expect to see the young on 
the generous side. Certainly, if religion is to be 
real to us, we must learn to feel, we must culti- 



196 CULTURE OF HEART 

vate pure sentiment, we must set to ourselves 
as a task the training of our heart-life. * You 
have heard many outcries,' said Ruskin, ' against 
sensation lately ; but I can tell you it is not less 
sensation we want, but more. The ennobling 
difference between one man and another — 
between one animal and another — is precisely 
in this, that one feels more than another. If we 
were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be 
easily got from us ; if we were earthworms, liable 
at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, 
perhaps too much sensation might not be good 
for us. But being human creatures, it is good for 
us ; nay, we are only human in so far as we are 
sensitive, and our honour is precisely in pro- 
portion to our passion.' 

We are afraid of sentiment. We kill our 
affections by hiding them even from those we 
love ; we let our friends die without telling them 
how much we owe them ; the sweetest souls of 
our households pass from us before we even 
know how we have taken everything and given 
nothing. For want of sentiment men are hard- 
ening into worldlings, money-grubbers, material- 
ists, sensualists. We deprecate passion ; and 
noble life is dying because there is in our midst 



CULTURE OF HEART 197 

little passion for anything great. Every true 
and unselfish passion purifies, it lifts the life to 
a higher platform. Even the passion of a great 
sorrow has saving power. We moralise over the 
foolish loyalties of men, their capacity of creat- 
ing heroes out of very inferior material, such as 
the great Jacobite sentiment in Scotland for the 
Stuarts. Even if in the judgment of history the 
heroes do turn out to be unworthy, the devotion 
of honest hearts is not always wasted — it makes 
them worthy. Mark Rutherford in the Revolu- 
tion in Tanner s Lane describes the tremendous 
ovation Louis XVIII. got in London. ' There 
was a great crowd in the street when he came 
out of the hotel, and immense applause ; the mob 
crying out "God bless your Majesty" as if they 
owed him all they had and even their lives. It 
was very touching, people thought at the time, 
and so it was. Is there anything more touching 
than the waste of human loyalty and love? As 
we read the history of the Highlands, or a story 
of Jacobite loyalty such as that of Cooper's 
Admiral Bluewater, dear to boys, we sadden that 
destiny should decree that in a world in which 
piety is not too plentiful, it should run so 
pitifully to waste, and that men and women 



198 CULTURE OF HEART 

should weep hot tears over bran-stuffing and 
wax.' But it is better that men and women 
should in sincere if mistaken enthusiasm give 
their heart's treasure to what we think only bran- 
stuffing and wax, than that they should imagine 
that there is nothing in the world to love pas- 
sionately, and none they should loyally believe 
in and follow. Hero-worship is a great factor in 
education, as all who have to do with boys can 
testify. 

Emotion is at the basis of life, even of intellect- 
ual life. It is folly to imagine that thinking is at 
its highest when feeling is at its lowest. The life 
of the heart is necessary for the life of thought. 
True culture here does not interfere with other 
culture, but rather gives it new grace and fills its 
incompleteness. A poet will have more exalted 
feelings and thoughts at the sight of the stars 
than an astronomer with all his science if he is a 
mere observer and recorder of facts. There is no 
great thought when it is not transfused with 
great feeling. In moments of emotional excite- 
ment the intellect can grasp ideas that otherwise 
would be impossible. There is no profound 
morality which is not touched with emotion. 
Morality will not remain a permanent force in 



CULTURE OF HEART 199 

life unless it is supported by purified sentiment 
and by personal love. Both as individuals and 
as a community we suffer from too little true 
sentiment. We have too little of the high and 
holy fear that is the beginning of wisdom, too 
little of the deep indignation at wilful evil, too 
little of the keen sorrow that takes on the heart 
the burden and mystery of life. We doom our 
emotional nature to seek satisfaction in petty 
feelings and in transient thrills. There is no 
religion even where the heart is not moved. The 
great revelation is that God is love. If He 
were only wisdom and power and justice and 
righteousness, we could at the best stand to Him 
in the relation of subjects ; but when we know 
that He is also love, we can stand in the relation 
of children. One of the fruits of faith is seen in 
the quickening and deepening of sentiment, the 
creation of finer feelings of pity and compassion 
and charity. It produces sympathy, and is far 
removed from the purely intellectual outlook of 
the man whose boast is that he regulates life by 
cold reason. 

Here also true education implies restraint. 
Some human emotions, such as joy and compas- 



200 CULTURE OF HEART 

sion, are of a high and noble character, and can 
usually be expressed without much danger of 
abuse, though even here, as we shall see, care is 
needed; but there are others equally natural and 
spontaneous which always need the most careful 
watching, such as grief and fear and anger. 
Some schools of philosophy have insisted on 
these feelings being curbed, and as far as possible 
crushed, as if it were unworthy of our manhood 
to give them any place, making the ideal of life 
a passionless calm. But the true way is not to 
attempt to kill emotions, but to purify them, and 
our appeal is to preserve the life of the heart by 
insisting on the need of control. How great 
that need is we can see, when we think how life 
suffers when emotion is allowed to run to seed. 
We know in ordinary practice how feckless 
the most sympathetic people may be, and how 
unreliable they often are at a pinch. They spill 
themselves all over the place, and when they 
have poured out their sentiment there is nothing 
left. In times of difficulty, how we value what 
we call the sober mind, the man of sane judg- 
ment who has a grip of himself and thus of the 
situation, who never lets himself go in idle words 
or in rash resolves. The facile, shallow tempera- 



CULTURE OF HEART 2or 

ment that easily boils to passion and as easily 
freezes to despair, that moves now to extrava- 
gant hopes and again to extravagant fears, that 
lives ever subject to storms, to swellings, and 
tumults of soul, can give little practical help in 
a crisis. 

We come to this, to begin with, that however 
good and necessary emotion may be, reason must 
be used as the ballast of feeling. Emotion un- 
balanced by reason splutters itself out in sound 
or degenerates into mere whim or prejudice. It is 
terrible to think how much life is ruled by mere 
prejudice, tossed about by every wave. ' Fine 
feelings without vigour of reason are in the situ- 
ation of a peacock's tail dragging in the mud.' x 
It is dangerous to lose control of any of our 
powers, and uncontrolled emotion is like a bull in 
a china-shop. To know that we are in the zone of 
danger here, we need only remember the common 
tendency to relapse after a violent strain of feeling, 
whether it be on the one side an unregulated 
ecstasy of joy, or on the other an unrestrained 
flood of sorrow. If it lives at all after such a re- 
lapse, it lives only as a feeble sentimentalism. 
The man of feeling, if he lets his feeling run away 

i Foster. 



202 CULTURE OF HEART 

with him, will probably become an empty dreamer. 
When sentiment in excess and unbalanced is at 
last exhausted, its place is often rilled by a false 
sentimentalism. Sentiment is the very soul of 
human life, keeping it true and sweet and sound : 
sentimentalism turns the wholesome force into 
something degrading and diseased. 

The urgent need for the guidance of the feel- 
ings will be seen even in the region where there 
is least of all danger of excess, that of compassion. 
Even here we see that the instincts of pity 
and help and charitable emotion need wise and 
careful guidance if we are to avoid doing more 
harm than good. Many a benefaction has missed 
its aim through the lack of wise direction and 
prudent oversight. If men thought more of the 
remoter consequences of their acts, there would 
be more judgment in their charity as well as in 
their ordinary conduct. Indiscriminate charity 
may be only another and subtler form of selfish- 
ness, merely to get rid of the particular distress 
that happens to be present. Philanthropy, in- 
deed, needs more wisdom than it usually receives. 
For example, if industry is discouraged by any 
well-meant benevolence or by a law prompted by 
philanthropy, the ultimate result will be only an 



CULTURE OF HEART 203 

increase of poverty and distress. This is any- 
thing but a plea for callousness and for the lack 
of sensitiveness in which we saw that the most 
aggravated forms of cruelty have their roots. It 
is a plea for the wisdom that will bring to bear 
on the problems of our times all the powers of 
mind and not merely the casual charitable feeling 
of the moment. 

Not only in the region of charity, but along the 
whole line of life, we find that when true and 
pure and wise sentiment is exhausted, a spurious 
substitute is often found in some form of senti- 
mentalism. It finds many expressions in litera- 
ture, as in Sterne and the school of Shandyism, 
which is perhaps its most maudlin form, and 
as to-day in works of fiction which flood us with 
counterfeit pathos. Rousseau is an example of 
another false form of sentiment, with his affecta- 
tion of sympathy, a luxury of pity without any 
grip on the heart or any correspondence in the 
life. With all its great interest of matter and of 
style, his Confessions often sickens with its mock 
heroics and its drench of unreal sentiment. We 
are compelled to assent to Professor James's 
judgment, though inserted casually in a chapter 
on Psychology, ' When a resolve or a fine glow of 



204 CULTURE OF HEART 

feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing 
practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost ; it 
works so as positively to hinder future resolutions 
and emotions from taking the normal path of 
discharge. There is no more contemptible type 
of human character than that of the nerveless 
sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life 
in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but 
who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, 
inflaming all the mothers of France, by his elo- 
quence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies 
themselves, while he sends his own children to the 
foundling hospital, is the classical example of 
what I mean.' 

There is an elevation of mind where pure 
emotion raises thought to its highest power and 
feeling suffuses reason, so that the life is ever 
saved from becoming dully formal or inhumanly 
cold. That is one thing ; but it is quite another 
thing when the mind is open to be played on 
by every wayward gust of feeling, in vehement 
joy or ungovernable sorrow, never free from the 
possibility of tumult. We cannot live in spasms, 
and the best results of life are attained in calm 
and serious effort, in submission of will and 
resignation of heart. In practical life, when true 



CULTURE OF HEART 205 

sentiment is lost, excitement is made to take its 
place. It becomes a feverish lust to fill up the 
void. Feeling, like fire, is a good servant but a 
dangerous master. We are only saved from the 
danger when there is some sort of real corre- 
spondence in action with any feeling evoked. 
The danger of tragedy as a spectacle lies in 
the separation of the feelings excited from any 
opportunity to assist practically. Tragedy may, 
as Aristotle said, purge the soul with pity and 
with fear, but the danger is that men are satisfied 
and pleased with their own virtuous feelings ; 
they applaud virtue and hiss vice, and go out to 
harden their hearts against the actual needs and 
claims. Augustine noted this of himself in the 
days when stage plays carried him away, full of 
images of his miseries and of tinder for his flames. 
He knew that to suffer in oneself is pain, and to 
suffer from sympathy with others is pity. ' But 
what sort of pity is this,' he asks, 'for the shams 
and shadows of the stage ? For the auditor is not 
moved to succour, but only asked to grieve ; and 
he applauds the actor of these fictions the more, 
the more he grieves. And if those human mis- 
fortunes, whether they be histories of olden times 
or mere fictions, be so acted that the spectator is 



206 CULTURE OF HEART 

not moved to grief, he goes away disdainful and 
censorious ; but if he be moved to grief, he stays 
intent and enjoys the tears he sheds.' 

There is some warning for us all in this danger 
of losing control of what is one of our highest 
powers, whether it be in excessive indulgence in 
plays or music or novel-reading, or a futile senti- 
mentalism that never inspires to anything. Even 
the highest religious excitement is a state of risk, 
and one of the commonest errors is to make 
religion consist of feeling and to judge of religious 
states according to the ardent sensibility or the 
passion and emotion displayed. A man may be 
melted to tears without any effect on life, and to 
him religious excitement may be as demoralising 
as any other form of dissipation. To be carried 
away with a flood of feeling even about God's 
love and the highest things in religion may be 
very different from true elevation of soul. We 
have admitted that there is no religion where the 
heart is not touched, but emotion is not the end 
of religion. It is a valuable instrument, a means 
to influence reason and conscience and will. Its 
great use is to drive a man with resistless force 
over the obstacles that keep him imprisoned in 
the channels of sense. The agitation and excite- 



CULTURE OF HEART 207 

ment and tense feeling in the time of repentance 
and decision are not in themselves religion, and 
their great purpose is achieved when they make 
us repent or decide or act. Religious excitement 
needs to be saved from running to waste. It must 
be mastered and harnessed to achieve the ends of 
the spirit in a holy life and in noble service. 

Thus, on every hand, we see that sentiment 
needs to be weighted on the one side by true 
thinking, and on the other by right action. 
These are the true means of control and guid- 
ance. It will be saved from running riot by 
larger views of truth, and by being made ever a 
provocative to good works. For example, in 
religion undue excitement and excessive emotion 
are restrained by cultivating large thoughts, and 
also by bringing the sentiment to the proof of 
action in actual life. This is not to make a cold 
and unemotional state the ideal, but rather the 
opposite : it is to preserve the force of feeling in 
its true vigour and freshness. The power of 
religious worship to regulate emotion and con- 
trol excitement lies in the first means suggested, 
the cultivation of large thoughts. When the 
mind is off its balance, either with joy or sor- 
row, with rapture or remorse, it is calmed and 



208 CULTURE OF HEART 

steadied by being brought into the presence of 
God in prayer or praise. It breaks the current 
of passion, and brings the soul again to equi- 
librium. Worship is a medicine of the soul to 
allay agitation and give right expression to any 
natural feeling. 

The second test of sentiment which we have 
mentioned, is the practical one of putting it into 
practice. The emotion which is divorced from 
action is unsafe. Life is real and earnest,- and 
though there is room for sentiment, there is none 
for the sentiment which destroys action and 
weakens life. After all, the test of steam is speed, 
and the test of emotion is motion : the test of 
pity is help : the test of the benevolent affections 
is benevolence. 'To feel is but to dream until we 
do.' We have sometimes seen a man enjoying 
a rich luxury of emotion, and have thought that 
what he needed most was a cold douche of 
reality, and that he never would be right until he 
made his feeling square with fact, and put it 
into practice. No matter how many and how 
good our sentiments are, our character cannot 
change for the better, but only for the worse, if 
we never attempt the concrete deed, if we never 
let the emotion drive us into moral effort. 



CULTURE OF HEART 209 

Now all this may seem to leave us floundering 
amid contradictions. If at one time we declare 
that we are rotting at the heart for lack of senti- 
ment and passion, and now speak cautiously of 
the danger of such tumult of soul ; if, for example, 
at one time the teaching is that a man must be 
willing to be deceived sometimes rather than let 
his generous impulses be stifled, and now the 
teaching is that charitable emotion may be a 
source of evil. But the way out is simple, when 
we see that the restraint of heart is necessary for 
its own true culture. Emotion must be disci- 
plined and trained, that it may not be squandered 
on foolish causes, or perverted into evil channels. 
Here, as elsewhere, the higher the gift the more 
terrible is its abuse. The gifts of the heart, 
being higher and more delicate than the gifts of 
the mind, have a greater gulf fixed between their 
highest and lowest forms. Love, which is the 
joy of life, may be its curse. The golden bond 
which links soul to soul may be a chain to bind 
the life to loathsomeness. Friendship may lead 
to heaven, or be 'procuress to the lords of hell.' 
The romance of life may itself be poisoned and 
become corruption. We see the need of wise and 
careful training in this region of our nature. 



210 CULTURE OF HEART 

Religion, whose sphere is the heart, includes 
and combines the two opposites. To give God 
the heart is to give Him the issues of life. Christ 
unifies life for us. He safeguards every part of 
our being, and uses every power. He inspires 
passion, and regulates it. Evil desire and false 
sentiment will not live where He is. In pro- 
portion as He rules in the heart, conforming the 
life to His own likeness, the affections are safe ; 
for He provides an infallible standard. He sat- 
isfies the craving for a perfect love, and sets 
great purposes before His lovers. He generates 
passion in the heart — His peerless passion for 
purity — His passion for weak folk, for justice 
and mercy and righteousness. Even in the fierce 
fight, He gives peace from the turmoil of con- 
tending voices without, and from the tumult of 
conflicting feelings within ; for a man can say, 
from the safe anchorage of His love, 'My heart 
is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.' 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 



i The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the 
moral sentiment.' — Emerson. 

' The history of a man is his character.' — Goethe. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

CONSCIENCE has been called the voice of 
^-^ God in man, the divine speaking in the 
human. In our common language it is a divine 
spark kindled from heaven, and is as the meet- 
ing place of God with man. Through this we 
have the knowledge of good and evil, and have 
something that may be called an inward guide 
for conduct. But in our time, like every other 
part of nature and of man, conscience has been 
studied scientifically. Men have not been con- 
tent simply to believe that conscience is a divine 
guide. They have asked, what is the origin of 
conscience, how did it come that we have this 
moral witness, excusing or accusing ? They have 
tried to trace out its growth in the individual 
and in the community, and have written the 
natural history of conscience. The attempted 
explanations are not always satisfactory, as with 
Darwin, who explains it thus : * The social in- 

213 



214 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

stincts are more persistent than the instinct of 
vengeance or the instinct to steal food when 
hungry, and at last man comes to feel that it 
is best for him to obey his more persistent in- 
stincts.' This does not carry us very far, and 
does not explain how men could get at what 
they feel to be an inviolable rule of obligation 
and duty for themselves, a moral imperative 
which says ' I ought/ and ' I ought not,' an 
inward law which experience teaches them they 
cannot disobey without suffering. The insuf- 
ficiency of Darwin's explanation is exposed by 
himself when he continues : 'It is obvious that 
every one may, with an easy conscience, gratify 
his own desires, if they do not interfere with his 
social instincts, that is, with the good of others.' 
It may be the beginning of the natural history 
of conscience, but we have to travel a long way 
before we come within sight of what the word 
stands for in our ordinary language. 

The inquiry has done much to make the sub- 
ject clearer. We do see it to be a growth, and 
that moral life has continuity like all other life. 
The conscience of to-day is more enlightened 
than — is certainly different from — the conscience 
of a past age. There are things which would 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 215 

not be tolerated now, which before were taken 
as a matter of course. The Christian conscience 
differs from the pagan conscience which it super- 
seded. The mistake which is often made is the 
very strange one that because we know con- 
science to be a growth, because we can to some 
extent trace its origin, therefore it has lost its 
divine authority. It is a very common mistake to 
imagine that because we can understand in some 
measure how a thing came to be we have there- 
fore explained it. A description of a process is 
supposed to be an explanation of existence. The 
same mistake is being made all along the line 
of our scientific investigation. Because we can 
see how life works and unfolds itself, developing 
from form to form, therefore we have disposed 
of the mystery of life. Because we can trace 
the genesis of mind, or at least can partially 
open up the stages of its development, therefore 
we have explained the mystery of mind. Some- 
times even a scientific definition, if learnedly 
worded, is taken to be a sufficient explanation. 
Rather the opposite is the case. The more 
knowledge we possess regarding anything, the 
more reverence should we have; for the more 
do we see our essential ignorance. 



216 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

All questions on the origin of conscience are 
practically of secondary importance. How it 
came that men have learned knowledge of right 
and wrong, how they came to recognise personal 
responsibility before an internal tribunal, how 
they were led to see this to be right and that 
to be wrong — the mere process is not of supreme 
value though it is of very great interest. What 
is of supreme importance is that we should 
accept the fact. The conscience is no more 
discredited by evolution than the body is. When 
we are compelled to modify the old intuitional 
theory of conscience, it does not lose its sacred- 
ness or its authority. We know that the Chris- 
tian conscience, which imperfectly governs our 
civilisation, did not come full-grown by a miracle, 
like Minerva armed and complete out of the 
brain of Jove. It has grown, and is growing. 
It is the fruit of the spirit of Christ working in 
us and in the world. And we ourselves confess 
how partially we have realised it, what higher 
moral reaches remain open to us as a community 
and as individuals. It is our sorrow and shame 
that the conscience of the Church on many things 
should be so unenlightened, and the conscience 
of the world hard and untouched regarding many 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 217 

social evils, and our own consciences not so 
tender and scrupulous and susceptible as they 
ought to be. We know that conscience has 
grown ; for it is our prayer that it should grow. 
Now, it is only in relation to others that it can 
thus grow. The chief good which our modern 
methods of study has brought us is the convic- 
tion that conscience is a social thing and is 
developed through society, and can only be 
permanent when it is registered on social con- 
ditions. It is not enough that one here and 
there should have higher aspirations and a purer 
standard than others. The work of the Church 
is to affect the public conscience ; for as the social 
conscience is, so in the long run is the individual 
conscience. Take the things which are branded 
by law and custom as sins and crimes. Some 
of these things we cannot imagine ourselves, 
whether we would commit them or not, thinking 
of them otherwise than as sins and crimes. That 
is because they are indelibly burned into our con- 
science. But there are other things in business 
and in general life which are kept sinful to us 
just because of the public conscience on the 
subject. If our environment were changed, 
would we hold tenaciously to all the points of 



218 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

moral living which we possess now? As a 
matter of fact it is found when such restraints 
are removed that often men revert to a lower 
level of moral life and thought. That is found 
too commonly in countries where there is no 
Christian standard and no public conscience on 
certain points. 

But while that is true and represents the work 
the Church has to do to elevate the whole mass 
and Christianise the laws and institutions and the 
community generally, still conscience is also a 
personal thing as well as a social. The appeal 
to conscience can be made just because the 
individual can rise above the level of his day. 
To live according to the public conscience 
merely is to live a very somnolent moral life. 
After all it does not need a very strong spiritual 
sense and a highly vitalised conscience just to 
keep out of jail, and even to perform all that is 
expected of us in a creditable manner. Most of 
us do not deserve any great praise for being 
fairly decent and respectable, we are hedged in 
and protected so securely by an inherited con- 
science and the social conscience that is in the 
very atmosphere around us. It is all the con- 
science that many of us have. But this is not 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 219 

enough. Conscience has its proper play when a 
man rises to a higher level of moral practice than 
that on all sides of him. Conscience is not 
merely a moral policeman to prevent outrages 
against the law of right. That is a low view 
of it, though general. The testimony of our 
conscience should not be merely a negative 
one denouncing sins — as with Shakespeare's 
Richard III. 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

Conscience is not a mere registering machine 
to estimate the value of our particular acts, con- 
demning us to remorse when we go far astray, 
but it may be a spiritual influence to prompt to a 
higher moral level. It is a teacher encouraging 
to purer and grander things, seeking to implant 
an aspiration after an ideal of virtue which will 
never be satisfied. That is why it is the voice of 
God, not only rebuking a man for evil, but calling 
him with irresistible impulse towards the good. 

The feature of conscience in all its stages is the 
acceptance of obligation. The particular obliga- 
tions have differed in the different stages, the 
ideas of right and wrong being often imperfect 



220 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

enough. The history of conscience is a history 
of clearer conception of what we ought to, and, 
therefore, must be and do. It has been an 
education. The race had to learn to discriminate, 
and with every fresh light it has seen the path it 
must tread, and that for the time has been God's 
perfect will. Conscience has ever meant this 
sense of obligation, the idea of a law, a higher 
will, a standard somewhere to which we must 
conform. Obligation, constraint, almost moral 
necessity, have been laid on men. I ought, you 
ought, we ought. At every stage of conscience 
there has been this constraint, the conception of 
some law which it behoved men to obey. That 
is why conscience, even when imperfect, has been 
to the world the sacred flame which it dare not 
let die, a divine light, part of the Light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 

Bishop Butler, in his great sermons on Human 
Nature, after establishing the supremacy of the 
moral element in life, sums up in these words : 
1 Nothing can be more evident than that, exclusive 
of revelation, man cannot be considered as a 
creature left by his Maker to act at random, and 
live at large up to the extent of his natural 
power, as passion, humour, wilfulness, happen to 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 221 

carry him ; which is the condition brute creatures 
are in ; but that from his make, constitution, or 
nature, he is in the strictest and most proper 
sense a law to himself. He hath the rule of 
right within : what is wanting is only that he 
honestly attend to it.' It is not necessary to go 
into disputed questions as to the origin and 
growth of conscience in order to understand and 
accept this sense of obligation. Practically the 
conscience means the moral sentiment which is 
an instinct in us. It is our recognition of, and 
obligation to, a higher law than our own will or 
pleasure. To enlighten and educate and train 
our conscience represents the great moral task of 
life. If we never honestly attend to this sphere 
of our nature we are not dealing fairly by our 
own powers. If care and cultivation are needed 
elsewhere, how can we assume that here nothing 
is required but a policy of drift ? Rather, much 
more important is it to have a trained and tender 
conscience than to have a learned and educated 
mind ; for the direction of life and its real safety 
depend most of all on moral sanctions. 'There 
is something very great and blessed as well as 
inevitable,' says Rothe in his Still Hours, 'in the 
fact that our mind is in agreement and harmony 



222 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

with the eternal and inviolable laws of the world 
and its Creator. The bringing about of this 
harmony in himself is one of the chief duties in 
the self-training of the individual.' 

How is the conscience to be trained ? It is 
done by obedience to its dictates, by responding 
promptly to our sense of right, by a life sur- 
rendered to duty. Obedience is the test of our 
advance in moral life. Conscientiousness is the 
only proof of conscience, as faithfulness is the 
proof of faith and service is the proof of love. 
And obedience is not only the test of moral 
attainment, but it is also the method of attaining. 
Enlightenment through obedience is the ap- 
proved religious method. The blessing comes 
to those who are in the way of the command- 
ments. We often reverse the process, and con- 
cern ourselves with difficulties to be explained 
and questions to be answered and contradictions 
to be reconciled. We begin by wanting to know 
rather than by wanting to obey. We make 
religion too much a matter of opinion, of know- 
ledge, of enlightenment, and think we do well to 
refuse to go a step further than we can see. We 
ask, What is truth ? when it would be more to 
the point if we asked oftener, What is duty ? 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 223 

Truth is reached through obedience. Loyalty to 
conscience brings light. The constant effort to 
do what is right gives the spiritual discernment 
to recognise what is right. There are more 
pressing questions than the speculative ones — 
questions raised to every soul of us by uneasy 
consciences and turbulent wills, by unfulfilled 
duty and unworthy lives. When we are honest 
with ourselves the questions that trouble us to 
the heart are not how to reconcile this with that, 
but how to reconcile what we are with what we 
ought to be. 

Now, conscience is a practical guide for the 
conduct of life, not for settling speculative ques- 
tions. Our real difficulties are practical, not 
speculative. We may cheat ourselves into the 
belief that if we had only some philosophical or 
doctrinal doubt settled we would have got rid of 
all our difficulties. These are not the things 
that are keeping us from what we acknowledge 
to be our highest life. It is a common expedi- 
ent to get rid of the obligation of our practical 
conscience by perplexing ourselves with what 
are called cases of conscience. It is usually a 
form of self-deception. We often want an 
excuse for fulfilling our lower desires. We 



224 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

pretend we cannot separate right from wrong 
and we are in straits how to reconcile the facts of 
life with the facts of religion. We try to mystify 
ourselves sometimes by showing that there are 
two sides to every question. The truth is this, 
that often we seek excuse to lead a lower moral 
life than our conscience would let us. The worst 
of it is that the very keenness of conscience 
against which we struggle is a proof that we 
might help the world to truer life, while we are 
trying to cozen our soul into the belief that our 
standard is absurd and morbid. 

In the hour of temptation the one practical 
rule is to cling to conscience as to life. Passion 
draws a man into its smothering folds and in 
weakness he gives in, believing that thus he will 
get rest from the struggle and rest from con- 
science. He is only piling up the fires of his 
own hell. In the heat of temptation our only 
chance lies in conscience as representing God to 
us. The question is not the abstract one as to the 
absolute reliability of conscience, but this practi- 
cal and particular evil against which conscience 
protests. In spite of all sophistry, duty in this 
particular thing is clear. There is a leading of 
God, a place where he meets man and prompts 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 225 

to the higher life, and that place is the sanctuary 
of conscience. 

Further, conscience needs to be enlightened. 
It has to be trained by accepting all the personal 
and social obligations of our situation, and to be 
reinforced by the fruits of knowledge and ex- 
perience. Conscience needs to be guided by 
thought and judgment and sensitive feeling, or it 
may become an organ of wrong instead of right 
— and this although it is really active and re- 
sponsive. An unenlightened conscience may be 
very scrupulous and exacting and susceptible to 
impressions, and all the time be an engine of evil 
in the life and in the world. It may become 
bigoted and fanatical, making a man self- 
opinionative and harsh and even cruel. In 
obedience to conscience men have perpetrated 
hideous crimes because conscience was perverted. 
A difference of opinion has often been made an 
excuse for censorious judgments and for cruel 
oppression. Conscientiousness is a great quality 
of moral living, but it needs to be informed and 
enlightened by knowledge and to be made 
tender by deep feeling. A narrow conception of 
duty may thus rob a man of his legitimate 
influence over others. Goodness needs thought 
Q 



226 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

and reason before she can take her regal place. 
Goodness means the sanctification of all the 
powers of our nature. We have here another 
illustration of the need of proportional growth, 
for like other capacities, conscience cannot be 
made the most of if taken singly by itself. 

Conscience needs to be educated through re- 
flection, as only thus can duty grow clear. 
Conscience becomes more sure in its discrimi- 
nation as it is enlightened by knowledge and 
reflection. Coleridge has a profoundly true 
comment on this point. ' Few are so obdurate, 
few have sufficient strength of character to be 
able to draw forth an evil tendency or immoral 
practice into distinct consciousness, without 
bringing it in the same moment before an 
awakened conscience. But for this very reason 
it becomes the duty of conscience to form the 
mind to a habit of distinct consciousness. An 
unreflecting Christian walks in twilight amongst 
snares and pitfalls.' 1 Mental and moral growth 
go together. A forward moral impulse serves 
also the highest purposes of intellect. A true 
and deep religious character carries with it the 
quickening of the whole being, among other 

1 Aids to Reflection. 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 227 

things enlarging the mental horizon. Often men 
of no formal education have attained an intel- 
lectual outlook from their sincere religious faith, 
which has given them sympathy with all large 
thoughts and all high purposes. 

Conversely, intellectual culture should develop 
moral character. A trained intelligence can 
deal with cases of conscience, with difficulties of 
moral choice, and should find its way easily to 
wise and consistent decisions. When intellectual 
development is accompanied by moral growth it 
gains in richness and security. Milton dedicated 
himself early to the great task which he felt to 
be his portion in life, to leave something so 
written to after times as they should not willingly 
let die. As he strove to qualify himself for his 
vocation of poet he laboured strenuously to 
equip his mind fully ; but he saw deeper into the 
sources of all great achievement, and knew 'that 
he who would not be frustrate of his hope to 
write well hereafter in laudable things ought 
himself to be a true poem ; that is, a composition 
and pattern of the best and honourablest things ; 
not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men 
or famous cities unless he have in himself the 
experience and the practice of all that which is 



228 CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

praiseworthy.' His self-cultivation included a deep 
moral purpose, a determination to do nothing that 
would taint his mind or blunt his conscience. 
Few poets or artists have given themselves so 
completely to such an ideal as Milton, and, as Dr. 
Johnson said, it is from such a fervid and pious 
promise might be expected the Paradise Lost. 
A man of genius may be the victim of appetite 
or passion and yet create some great and 
beautiful works, but the character which his life 
is creating will leave its mark upon his work and 
will weaken his capacity. In the long run the 
gains of intellect are only secured and conserved 
by moral character. 

We cannot deal with conscience apart from 
the will ; for the moral choice of life is bound up 
both with conscience and will. If it is necessary 
to distinguish between these two powers, we can 
say that will is conscience put into action. The 
sphere of our own free will is the arena of all 
moral fights, and at every point of moral choice 
the conscience makes itself heard. In practical 
ethics all action must be regarded as the fruit 
of the will. We sometimes speak in common 
language of doing a thing against our will, but 
that is only an inaccuracy of speech. We may 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 229 

do an act against our judgment, and against 
what we admit should be our will, against the 
better part of our nature, but the will is the 
responsible agent of the act. We may, and do, 
often deceive ourselves, thinking that the citadel 
of our will is intact though we have surrendered 
to evil in life, by pretending that a course of 
action is due not at all to our will but to some 
necessity of environment. But that only means 
that the particular motive or temptation has 
advanced sufficiently strong inducements to 
capture the power of will. When Romeo went 
to the old apothecary to purchase poison with- 
out disguising that the poison was to be used 
for an illegal object, Shakespeare makes the 
apothecary give the poison for the sake of the 
reward, using this as a salve to his conscience, 
1 My poverty and not my will consents.' Nay, 
it was against his conscience, against his better 
judgment, but not against his will. The tempta- 
tion was too strong for his will, and the selling of 
the poison to be used for suicide was his will. 
The poverty was only the motive which drove 
his will in that direction. In all questions of 
morals we come back to the will, and fasten 
responsibility there. 



2 3 o CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 

So all-important is the will in the moral judg- 
ment of a man, that we can say that according 
to the character of the will is the character of the 
life. Even in worldly business we know how 
men are separated into classes by differences of 
will. One man is of what we call a strong will, 
knowing what he means and wants, and usually 
gets it. The man of irresolute will is also of 
feckless life. The will must be trained if we are 
to have any real mastery over our lives. We 
must practice decisions, to avoid the vice of 
irresolution. We know the value of a resolute 
will, not only in practical affairs, but in the 
things of intellect, where mental concentration 
seems to depend on it. In moral culture also it 
is essential, and means the trained ability to 
reject certain thoughts and courses. This is the 
great strategy against temptation, to call up 
other reserve forces and turn the enemy's flank 
by different thoughts and nobler imaginations. 
Also, when conscience bears witness to a duty, let 
the will set about performing it, and both will 
grow in strength. 

As intellect is based on moral character, so 
character is fed by religion. The gains of moral 
life are secured by a reach forward into the 



CULTURE OF CONSCIENCE 231 

spiritual life. We touch here the subject of our 
next chapter, the Culture of Spirit. Only thus 
can the conscience be fully illumined and 
educated, and the will be strengthened and in- 
spired. Experience shows to all of us the truth 
in the old parable of life which represents a man 
offered two alternatives, the allurement of the 
ideal and the enticement of the real. State them 
how we will, the alternatives are the facts of life 
to us. We can only truly fulfil ourselves through 
loyalty to the moral law and adherence to the 
ideal. If we follow simply and sincerely we are 
not long left in darkness or in doubt as to duty, 
and one of the rewards is the joy of a good con- 
science. * Have a good conscience,' says Thomas 
a Kempis, 'and thou shalt ever have joy.' Well, 
even if there is not a very jubilant joy through 
over-much struggle, there will be at least some 
measure of peace. 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 



The soul of all culture is the culture of the soul. 1 

— Bushnell. 



CHAPTER IX 

CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

T IFE in its deepest sense in the Bible is more 
■* — ' than the space of time between birth and 
death, and more than material existence and the 
continuance of the vital forces. It combines all 
the functions of being. It finds a due place for 
all the powers and needs of man. Life means, 
besides the material existence, all that makes 
man distinctive. It is the fulness of all his 
powers, the completion of all his possibilities. In 
addition to the material and the mental there is 
the spiritual. A man is not said to live in this 
sense unless he has part in the life of God. It 
speaks of his entering into life when he enters 
into relationship with God. Religion has to do 
with the whole life, every power and every detail, 
but it means first of all a higher principle of life 
which recreates the whole. Not merely to draw 
the breath, not merely to perform the functions 
of animal existence, and not even to have a com- 

235 



236 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

plete intellectual and emotional development, but 
to be spiritually-minded is life. Can we be said 
to have truly lived so far ? When we realise this 
deeper demand of our own nature and our 
clamant spiritual needs left unsatisfied, we under- 
stand Augustine's lament after searching into his 
heart and describing what he was at his worst 
and at his best, * Such was my life. But was it 
life, O my God ? ' 

Commonplace psychology ignores this spiritual 
sphere, or speaks of the facts in this region of 
human life as morbid, though for the credit 
of this science modern psychologists are be- 
ginning to accept these facts of the soul with 
the same reverence as they accept other facts. 
They are coming to see that this subject cannot 
be dismissed by disparaging it in comparison 
with the seemingly clear-cut truths of the exact 
sciences. It is not enough to reject the claim of 
religion on the ground that it is so vague and 
indefinite, or that it is impossible to reach a 
consensus of opinion on every point of religion. 
The higher a human faculty is, the more liable 
it is to be abused. The mistakes that can be 
made about it increase in proportion to its 
delicacy of nature. The finer the machinery, 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 237 

the more mischief can coarse, blundering fingers 
make. It is only to be expected that in the 
spiritual sphere this should be specially seen. 
That is one reason why it seems impossible 
to get unanimity in religion. Our sects are 
often the exaggeration of different sides of 
truth. In the intellectual life of man the con- 
fusion is great enough, seen in the differences 
of opinion on any question political or other- 
wise, and in the difficulty of arriving at clear 
views on any subject. The possibility of error 
is increased in dealing with the still higher 
sphere of spirit. The mistakes of religion have 
been many, the superstitions, the foolish notions, 
the undue prominence of particular phases. So 
apparent is this danger and so palpable have 
been the blunders, that some have declared that 
truth here cannot be discovered, that religion 
is not for us, that God is unknowable to man ; 
in other words, that it is better to live in the 
lower plane where we have less chance to err. 
This is the agnostic position. But if the soul 
is to be put out of court on such reasoning, 
on the same ground also should the intellect ; 
for here too are found error and mistake. 
Reason is not an infallible guide, as a dis- 



238 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

tracted world can testify. Indeed, there are 
men who have given up thought for precisely 
the same reason that some thinkers have given 
up religion. The mental life can be denied 
as reasonably as the spiritual. The true and 
even scientific attitude is for us to live up to 
our capacities. The very glimmerings and dis- 
tortions and reflections and mirage are evidences 
that there is light. We need patience and 
humble seeking and careful correction of error 
in spiritual truth as in scientific truth. Here, 
too, the soul that seeks finds. 

Now it is a fact of history and life that man 
is capable of spiritual training, which is some- 
thing other than mere mental acquirements. 
The agnostic position is unscientific ; for it is 
to prejudge and set an arbitrary limit to man's 
possibilities. There may be an obscurantism 
of science as well as of religion. The true 
attitude begins by accepting the facts ; and 
religion is a fact of history and experience. 
It is not enough to wave aside airily this whole 
question of spiritual intuition because it happens 
to be mysterious. Still worse is it to pass over 
all the experiences that speak of intercourse 
between the spirit of man and of God, as if 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 239 

they meant only some form of disease. Sabatier, 
in his Life of the Apostle Paul } asks, ' Where 
could we find a more wholesome mental con- 
stitution than belonged to Socrates or to Luther ; 
where a more true and delicate conscience than 
that of Joan of Arc ? And yet we know that 
their spiritual life had its source far beyond the 
sphere of pure reason. If this faculty of mystical 
exaltation is a disease, we should have to acknow- 
ledge that Jesus, despite the harmony of His 
nature, possessed an unsound mind ; for He had 
His moments of ecstasy — sacred moments which 
a coarse, vulgar understanding profanes by calling 
them hallucinations. No ; this is not the sign 
of a morbid disposition. In truth he is much 
rather the sick man who has never known any 
state but that of dry, cold reason. What else 
is religion ? what is prayer and adoration but an 
exaltation of spirit ? ' 

We may call spiritual qualities only the finer 
attribute of mind if we like, but we do not thus 
shift the problem raised by the facts. And 
whenever we admit the facts of spiritual ex- 
perience, immediately duty emerges. The duty 
regarding spirit is as plain as duty regarding 
body or mind. We do not stop to ask whether 



240 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

we can really understand facts essentially before 

we will accept anything as fact. We do not stop 

to ask whether we can know absolute truth before 

we try to find out what things are true. Why 

should we refuse to entertain the thought of God, 

because we cannot know God in His essence and 

nature ? If men through all these centuries have 

known some form of communion with the divine, 

can it be that now at last it is all a delusion? 

To hold such a view of history would be to 

despair of all knowledge and progress. Browning 

makes Cleon ask this question — 

The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, 
Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock ; 
The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe ; 
The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet ; 
The flowers turn double and the leaves turn flowers ; 
What, and the soul alone deteriorates? 

To hold such a view is to deny all history and 
to deny all law of progress. Religion is con- 
scious union with God ; but whether we are 
conscious of it or not, our whole life is bathed 
in the infinite life. Wherever there is a door out 
from the self of man, God stands at the door and 
knocks. In every region of our nature there is 
this contact with the infinite, in the ideal of 
knowledge, in the ideal of holiness, in every 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 241 

aspiration towards that which is beyond. We are 
enswathed and suffused by the infinite life of God, 
and until we enter into conscious relationship 
with the divine, we are incomplete and imperfect. 
Duty comes to us the moment we admit this 
fact. That is to say, a man is not justified in 
saying that he does not happen to possess this 
peculiar organ of religious knowledge, that he 
does not have these spiritual experiences, and 
therefore it is not for him to bother about it. He 
is not justified in adopting this attitude, for one 
thing because it is not true. He constantly uses 
the very faculties in his relations with his fellows 
which can be raised to the higher pitch that will 
give him a conscious relation also to God. The 
carnal mind which St. Paul speaks about is not a 
different mind from the spiritual, but is the same 
mind vitalised, so to speak. The carnal is not 
hopelessly divided from the spiritual, separated 
by an impassable gulf. When St. Paul made 
this distinction between the carnal and the 
spiritual, 1 he speaks of the former as babes 
who have not grown up into their possibilities. 
St. Paul, in other words, affirms man's natural 
affinity to God. The organ may be rudi- 

1 1 Cor. iii. 1, 2. 



242 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

mentary, but it is there. The babe, if it 
assimilates suitable food, will grow up out of 
the period of babyhood into manhood. The 
germ of the spiritual life is in us all, and will 
grow if it gets a chance of growth. We must 
come like children simply and humbly depend- 
ing on God, if we would see the Kingdom ; and 
when we come and make the venture of faith we 
do see. We are ushered into the life of spirit, 
and have the assurance of the reality of the 
spiritual world. It is spiritually discerned. 
Faith is the instrument of spiritual discernment ; 
and when the discernment is reached, all life 
becomes a holy shrine, where the soul serves at 
the altar priest-like ; and when faith does its 
perfect work, there comes down over the life 
that sweet summer-calm of spirit which some 
have known, and peace clings to the garments 
like a fragrance. Faith is the instrument of 
spiritual discernment, as knowledge is the in- 
strument of mental culture. The just live by 
faith. Religion is this exaltation of spirit above 
the things of sense, above even the things of 
intellect, the apprehension of the unseen and 
eternal. 

If a man were to live ever in this golden light, 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 243 

if he were to submit all his being to God, 
thought, affections, desires, ambitions, he could 
indeed, as the Apostle claims, judge all things 
spiritual, and refuse to be judged of any man. 
Who of us stands on this calm height, so stands 
to the world that we are outside its judgment, 
because above it, and can be overlooked by none 
except by God ? The spiritual in us is over- 
borne, overweighted by the animal. The soul 
may be said to be in abeyance in us, in a state 
of suspended animation, when it is not in im- 
mediate danger of being asphyxiated for want 
of air. It is one function of all religious methods 
and ordinances to remind us of the imperious 
claims of the soul, to recall us to our duty regard- 
ing it, to convince us that we are throwing away 
our birthright, and maiming our whole nature, if 
we are neglecting our highest life. 

The culture of the spirit does not mean some 
larger and sweeter pleasure merely, but has a 
practical bearing on the whole of life. It must 
be admitted that there is very little moral 
dynamic in intellect. It is often a moral pre- 
servative, and can help to fill up the life with 
good, but it cannot initiate. As mere negation 
is not enough, we need a power which will lift 



244 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

the whole nature out of the region of evil. A 
principle of life is needed. Reason in this 
sphere can at best only provide a suitable and 
pure environment for a larger life. That is good 
so far, but we need something to beget the higher 
life in us. We cannot conquer the evils of the 
lower life except by living in the higher. True 
morality comes, not by the mortifying of the 
flesh, but by the vitalising of the spirit. The 
lower clinging sins fall from us when we rise. 
They cannot live in the rarefied atmosphere 
above them. If it is borne in on a man that 
to make his life truly livable he must abstain 
from some habit, let him abstain; but for ulti- 
mate victory he must not rest in the negative 
triumph ; he must get out of the region of the 
struggle, and if possible forget it. It is dan- 
gerous to live with a hungry appetite, for the 
more it is mortified the more hungry it becomes. 
If the evil we have for the time conquered still 
engrosses our thoughts and fills our minds, the 
danger is not past. The danger is past when 
we have outlived it, and that can only be 
achieved by a spiritual advance. The struggle 
against temptation is the clearing of the decks 
for subsequent action. It is necessary in view of 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 245 

the action, but in itself is not true conquest. 
Conquest comes from spiritual-mindedness. If 
we move forward, we step out of the way of 
many of our difficulties. A reach forward into 
faith removes the discrepancies of knowledge. 
Entrance into the spiritual destroys the power of 
many former doubts. Usually it is not explana- 
tion we need, but a new standpoint. 

For some the kingdom has to be entered 
through struggle and soul-travail, through dark- 
ness and doubt; but the finest spirits seem to 
come to the kingdom without that convulsive 
ordeal, without anxious inquiry even into the 
foundation of their faith. They lose their hearts 
simply and easily to the beauty of holiness. 
They see the vision, and are not disobedient, but 
follow after. Their native piety of soul gives 
them instinctively the spiritual outlook on the 
world and life. They do not ask for proofs and 
evidences and laborious argumentation ; for truth 
seems to evidence itself to their devout minds. 
There is a lesson in this to all that religion is 
not apprehended logically, and we can easily 
over-estimate the value of our ordinary apparatus 
for acquiring knowledge. However the awaken- 
ing comes, through the severe birth pangs of 



246 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

spiritual life, or the simpler way of growth, we 
realise that it is a higher stage. Consistent and 
persistent faith gives even a distinction of man- 
ner. There comes naturally a certain separate- 
ness and aloofness from the trivial. The soul 
that is accustomed to deal with larger things 
cannot become engrossed and absorbed in petty 
things. Men could not grow passionate about 
trifles if they had larger causes at heart. Most 
of our bitter religious disputes are due to lack 
of spiritual culture. The man who has been in 
the presence of God, cannot easily descend to 
hair-splitting argument and barren theology. 

How are we to attain to this spiritual dis- 
cernment amid all the entanglement of the 
carnal life ? If we desire to possess culture of 
mind, we must lay hold of the instruments of 
mental education. So here in this sphere, if we 
are really in earnest about it, we must use all 
the available means of grace. We do not suffer 
from ignorance of these common things, to 
provide which is the chief duty of the Church — 
the value of holy meditation, of praise and 
prayer, of devotional culture, of submission of 
the life to conscience and God's will. Rather, 
we need to feel the imperial note of duty regard- 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 247 

ing all this, and to realise that we are bound to 
cultivate this spiritual discernment which we 
possess as men. Perhaps we will listen to the 
poet's description of these common instruments 
of spiritual culture, when we might dismiss as 
an oft-told tale a statement of religious method 
in prose. In the Excursion, Wordsworth makes 
the old Wanderer speak of the difficulty of 
maintaining heights of spirit, how beset we are 
with the things that make for decline of spiritual 
power, how we are unequally matched with cus- 
tom, time, and domineering faculties of sense, 
and further entangled by temptations and vani- 
ties, and ill-governed passions and discontent and 
care; and he asks — 

What then remains ? — To seek 
Those helps for his occasions ever near 
Who lacks not will to use them ; vows renewed 
On the first motion of a holy thought ; 
Vigils of contemplation ; praise ; and prayer — 
A stream, which from the fountain of the heart 
Issuing, however feebly, nowhere flows 
Without access of unexpected strength. 
But above all the victory is most sure 
For him who, seeking faith by virtue, strives 
To yield entire submission to the law 
Of conscience — conscience reverenced and obeyed, 
As God's most intimate presence in the soul, 
And His most perfect image in the world. 



248 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

If we take this side of our nature seriously, 
we will use all these methods of spiritual 
culture. 

All the masters of the devotional life, for 
instance, lay emphasis on prayer. Perhaps the 
reason why we lack the atmosphere of prayer in 
our lives is because we do not make the oppor- 
tunities. We must consciously and consistently 
seek to live the separated life, submitting our- 
selves to the discipline of heart and will which 
prayer involves. No faculty is expected to 
grow without the suitable environment and fit 
means. Business capacity is developed by a 
business training, and suitable opportunities are 
as much needed for the soul life. We must 
make the occasions. The making of a saint is 
not the work of a day, any more than the 
making of a scholar. The devoted life is the 
fruit of devotion : piety comes from prayer. If 
we would have moments on the mount, we must 
toil up the hill's rugged side. It is the business 
of a man who has the spiritual ideal to fix his 
mind on heavenly things. To gain the sweet 
strong mood of calmness, we must develop the 
contemplative life. We must confess that we 
have little of the devotional spirit among us. 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 249 

Even our religious life is largely a matter of 
activities, and what we call Christian work. 
There never were more organisation, more 
machinery, more conventions, and conferences 
and committees ; but even in the interests of this 
side of religion, we need more attention to the 
inward life. Our Christian activities cannot keep 
themselves going ; they must be fed by blood 
from the pulsing heart of faith. The cold will 
numb the limbs when the heart slackens its 
beat. The seed which springs up so quickly 
and strongly will wither away because it has 
no root. Devotional culture requires the wise 
and constant use of means as much as mental 
culture does. As we recognise the cultured 
mind with its wide and accurate reading, with 
its careful study and observation, so we recog- 
nise the cultured soul with its peace and grace 
and its 'harvest of a quiet eye.' This separated 
life is no affectation of manner. The most 
spiritual men have no pietistic airs, and are to 
be found in the market and in the street. They 
perhaps do not easily speak of the matters of 
faith, but they have taken the crooked places of 
their heart to God, and had them made straight 
there. 



250 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

Even here, in the highest culture of all, we 
have to guard against error, and have to bring 
it into line with life. We see in the early Church 
how the spiritual commotion from the influx of 
new life created great dangers, and the Church 
had to be guarded from excess and error and 
mistaken standards. The Corinthian Church, as 
we gather from its condition reflected in St. 
Paul's Epistles, suffered from the fever of an 
excessive vitality, and was beset by the tempta- 
tions of its highly strung state. They were in- 
clined to value the ecstasy of visions and to 
despise the quiet calm walk of faith. They 
were living in an atmosphere of spiritual excite- 
ment, and sometimes even neglected the ordinary 
morality of the Christian life. Never was there 
more needed the strong sane guidance of St. 
Paul, who combined a wonderful practical genius 
with his perfervid religious enthusiasm. One of 
the greatest dangers was the temptation to pride 
and self-glorification, which of course led to 
rivalry and unfriendly criticism of others. This 
is an inevitable danger of all spiritual exaltation 
and indeed of all spiritual culture. The tempta- 
tions seem to increase in subtlety and seductive- 
ness the nearer we approach the centre of life — 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 251 

The soul mounting higher to God, comes no nigher, 
But the arch-fiend Pride mounts at her side. 

If a man thinks himself to be specially spiritual 
or endowed with peculiar and exceptional gifts, 
the temptation at once arises to self-complacency 
if not to arrogant self-conceit. St. Paul guarded 
against this by reminding the Corinthians that 
all gifts come from God, not of merit but of 
grace, and are given not fcr their own sake, 
not even for the sake exclusively of those who 
are favoured with them, but for the larger sake 
of the Church and the world. The test of 
a gift is its power of service. The essential 
difference between men lies not in their different 
gifts but in their use of them. That is to say, 
it is a difference of character, not of capacity. 
In the Christian economy there is no room for 
personal glorification and the clashing of vulgar 
ambitions; for life is not judged by success but 
by service. 

It seems remarkable that spiritually-minded 
men should need to be warned against the 
temptation to pride, since these two things are 
incompatible. The one will kill the other, and 
they cannot really co-exist together. But we 
can see where the danger lurks for the unwary 



252 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

soul — ' I saw in my dream that at the very gate 
of heaven there was a door to hell.' This is a 
pitfall for all who dabble in the false spiritual- 
isms that have always attractions for certain 
temperaments. It comes as a delicate flattery 
to a man that he is privileged to enter into 
mysteries shut to others, that he is specially 
selected as a medium of occult influences from 
the spiritual world. Vanity is a leaven that 
works mischief in every sphere of human life, 
but nowhere is it so deadly as in this highest 
sphere of the spiritual. In the Corinthian 
Church great stress was laid on such apparent 
marvels as the speaking with tongues, and the 
humbler speech that could edify was looked 
down on as inferior. Paul scarified this stand- 
ard of valuation with keen sarcasm, and did 
not hesitate to pronounce their esteemed gift 
of tongues as mere gibberish if there was no 
reasonable interpretation. He drew a picture 
of the whole Church gathered in one place and 
all speaking with tongues. If a simple un- 
learned person or unbeliever should come in 
amidst the babel, he asked what would be 
thought of the proceedings, and answered by 
the form of his question, 'Will they not say 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 253 

that ye are mad ? ' He insisted on bringing 
all such gifts to the test of the practical and 
the useful, and reversed the whole scale of 
judging gifts. In the Christian life there stands 
first, not the mystical in faith but the practical, 
not the seeing of visions but the humble follow- 
ing of Christ. 

The same subtle temptation awaits all false 
spiritualisms with their esoteric doctrines, with 
their pretended insight into the spiritual world 
closed to the mass of men, their shadowy mys- 
ticism which the ordinary mind cannot grasp. 
Of all spiritual experience we must ask how it 
leads out in practice, how it issues in daily life, 
how it affects character and conduct. Has it 
led to new insight into the needs and tasks of 
life ? Has it brought new moral truth into 
light, or reinforced some new aspect of the old 
truth ? Has it inspired to larger love and a 
nobler sense of duty ? This appeal to practice 
must be made all along the line of spiritual 
life. There is a swift and sure penalty for all 
forms of religious exaggeration in the deteriora- 
tion of the spirit itself, working as we have seen 
often in conceit of self and its usual accompani- 
ment, censoriousness of others. In the same 



254 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

way the disease of introspection can only be 
cured by bringing faith out into the light, by 
judging the tree by the fruit. All the authorities 
in this sphere speak of the dangers of mere 
high-flying devotionalism without the steady- 
ing influence of conduct. ' It is not possible 
for thee, my son,' says Thomas a Kempis, ' to 
continue in the uninterrupted enjoyment of 
spiritual fervour, nor always to stand upon the 
heights of pure contemplation.' It is so easy 
to make feelings a substitute for practical 
obedience instead of making them an inspira- 
tion to obey. There is ever a danger of making 
religion a matter of emotion and not a matter 
of moral reverence, without sense of awe and 
mystery and without the compulsion of con- 
science. To trust merely to sublime feelings 
and high states of soul without judging faith 
by actual faithfulness will infect the whole 
spiritual life with insincerity and an ever- 
weakening sense of unreality. 

We come, then, to this further principle that 
spiritual-mindedness must be tested by the 
moral conscience as well as by practical life. 
The spiritual can never be divorced from the 
moral. The commandments of God remain, 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 255 

and by them we must judge our spiritual state. 
A man must not violate his moral perception 
even in the supposed interests of religion. The 
spiritual life is inseparably related to character, 
and all spiritual truth must be tested by con- 
science, by moral law, and if found wanting 
there must be amended. F. W. Newman in 
his Phases of Faith relates an incident which 
came under his own knowledge of a man edu- 
cated and thoughtful who became a convert 
to the Irving miracles. After several years 
he totally renounced them as a miserable delu- 
sion because he found that a system of false 
doctrine was growing up and was propped by 
them. He was led astray by intellectually 
seeing nothing false in the Irvingite position : 
he was brought right by trusting to his moral 
perceptions. We can only enter into the region 
of religion, and remain in it, by moral sympathy. 
It begins as an act of self -surrender, but must 
then grow up into the life. 

A further principle for our guidance in the 
difficulties of this region is that the reason should 
be taken along with the spirit. In the matter 
of speaking with tongues, for example, Paul de- 
clared that a gift must be to edification, and also 



256 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

that it must be intelligible. If a man speaks 
with tongues it is of no earthly use, unless he 
can interpret it and make it plain and under- 
standable. For a true and useful spiritual life 
the reason should be satisfied as well as the 
emotions. Sane and sober judgment is needed. 
1 If I pray in an unknown tongue my spirit 
prayeth but my understanding is unfruitful.' 
This demand for balance of judgment would cure 
much religious extravagance and one-sidedness in 
the acceptance of truth. Scripture itself should 
teach us balance and proportion. A great truth 
can be laid hold on in a one-sided way and 
driven to extreme. It may issue in some blind 
fanaticism, or in some dark mysticism. It is 
sometimes assumed that a religious exercise is 
stamped peculiarly spiritual if it is manifestly 
irrational. Such gets no countenance from the 
virile thinking of St. Paul, who insists that the 
reason may be a vehicle of the spirit. Much 
play has been made on the distinction between 
religion and theology, the one as the life of the 
soul, the other as the intellectual presentation of 
that life. It is a distinction which sometimes 
needs to be strenuously maintained ; for religion 
is the one important reality of which theology is 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 257 

the scientific study. At the same time, religion 
cannot be left in vagueness, but must be clothed 
with a body of systematic thought. The mind of 
man cannot allow itself to be waved off from 
the most important region of life. No religion, 
however real and vivid in its personal appeal, can 
be safe if the intellect has not been secured in 
its service. Religion as an experience precedes 
theology, as natural life precedes the science of 
zoology, but it is a necessity of the mind to 
attempt to bring into order all that human life 
involves. 

The truth to keep firm hold of is that man is 
a real unity, and that the spiritual cannot be cut 
off and considered by itself as if it had no rela- 
tions to body or mind or morals. This inter- 
relation of all the parts of our being is a fact 
which we dare not lose sight of in religion as in 
what are considered the lower levels of life. The 
contemplative and the practical, the inner and 
the outer, are connected with subtle bonds, and 
one side cannot be neglected without the whole 
life suffering. We sometimes speak as if the 
soul were some ghostly entity that could be at- 
tended to by itself and nursed into richness of 
nature ; and we have often longed to have leisure 



258 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

to pay heed to the soul's life by itself, using all 
the approved methods of cultivating spiritual 
mindedness. It is a mistake which is responsible 
for many an error. We must make the whole 
life spiritual, and carry up all parts of our being 
together. We suffer seriously by our sectional 
experiments, but nowhere so seriously as in the 
matter of religion. F. D. Maurice's experience 
is that of many another : ' I dream sometimes of 
times when one might have more inward and less 
outward business ; but after forty years' experi- 
ence I find that the inward is not better in my 
case but worse for want of the outward, and that I 
really seek God most when I need His help to 
enable me to do what He has set me to do.' 

It comes to this, that devotion like everything 
else must be tested by life. The practical must 
always be used to restrain or at least to correct 
the mystical. There is a mysticism which is 
alien to the Christian faith. There is a mysti- 
cism which is a morbid growth, which might be 
called almost spiritual sensualism ; for it is as 
much a thing of the senses as of the soul. It is 
divorced from action. Its spiritual ecstasies are 
enjoyed without a thought of the duty and 
service which should follow. True religion has 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 259 

always an eye to the practical We should be 
suspicious of the piety which does not know 
service, of the prayer which does not lead to 
work, of the mysticism which begins and ends 
in its own emotions. If a man think himself 
spiritual, let him take knowledge of the practical 
demands made upon him by his special profession, 
judging his experiences by reason and by con- 
science and by the practical results in his life. 
It is not an argument against spiritual ideals, but 
for the control and education of them and their 
growth in true grace. 

We cannot forget also that the very methods 
which are necessary to secure and maintain 
spiritual insight can themselves become corrupt, 
and sin can mingle in our most holy things. 
The accredited means we use for spiritual culture, 
approved by all who are in a position to advise 

— prayer, solitude, meditation, devotional reading 

— all are liable to abuse and need to be carefully 

guarded against mistake. We can have all the 

methods and seasons of prayer and yet not have 

the heart brought into subjection. 

The river is bound by the ice-king's thong ; 
Below, the current runs swift and strong. 

It is no valid argument against prayer that it 



260 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

can be misused, but it is an argument for a re- 
newed serious endeavour to use it rightly. The 
same is true of the other methods and aids to 
devotion. Robertson of Brighton tells in a letter 
how he stopped devotional reading for a time, 
when he learned that devotional feelings may 
be very distinct from uprightness and purity of 
life. He had evidently come across cases where 
he judged that these feelings were strangely 
allied to the animal nature, seemingly the result 
of a warm temperament, and were, as he says, 
guides to hell under the form of angels of light. 
These cases disgusted him, and made him sus- 
pect feelings which he had hitherto cherished 
as the holiest, and produced a reaction. He saw 
that the basest feelings lie very near to our 
highest, and that they pass into one another by 
insensible transitions. ' The true lesson is to 
watch, suspect, and guard aspirations after good, 
not to drown them as spurious.' In spite of this 
temporary disgust he felt the need which de- 
votional books supply, and determined to begin 
them again ; for ' our affections must be nurtured 
in the Highest, or else our whole life flags and 
droops.' 

This is a region where one is afraid of dis- 



CULTURE OF SPIRIT 261 

couraging any, since few enough seriously at- 
tempt any spiritual culture at all ; but we will 
be safe if we pay heed to the warning that every 
gift means added responsibility, and every privi- 
lege is meant for duty. Our Lord's example shows 
us the mean between the extremes of the purely 
contemplative and the purely active life. Devo- 
tion is designed to fit us more truly for the tasks 
and needs of life. The still hour is for the stormy 
hours : communion is for life : prayer is for 
work. The devotional life finds its meaning and 
purpose in active service. By their fruits ye shall 
know them. 

But there can be no fruit at all unless the 
branch abide in the vine. This is last of all and 
first of all. Without God the soul is only an 
empty possibility ; He is needed to vitalise it. 
The appeal of this book is for a completer cul- 
ture than most of us have hitherto attempted. 
We are daily living below our conscience, and 
below our convictions, and far below our privi- 
leges ; and all because we do not live our life 
with continual reference to God, with thoughts, 
affections, hopes, desires circling towards Him, 
as a bird hovers to its nest. In spite of all the 
dangers to which we have called attention, we 



262 CULTURE OF SPIRIT 

must see that we are not fulfilling the end of our 
being, if we have no unseen life hid with Christ 
in God. We must see that to be spiritually 
minded is the only life. The saintly M'Cheyne 
said, ' It is not so much great talents God blesses, 
as great likeness to Christ.' This is our great 
ideal and example, and sums up to us all methods 
of spiritual culture. He is so much the Master 
of the spiritual world that when we mention 
faith, we can only mean faith as it is in Jesus. 
He is the way of access to the Father; He is the 
assurance to us of eternal things, the sign of the 
invisible ; He opens the door of the spiritual 
world to us. To be in union with Him is life ; to 
have His mind in us is to be spiritually minded. 
The Christian task is the practice of the presence 
of Christ. 

My soul, wait thou upon God, with the holy 
meditation which makes a man calm at the 
heart, and strong for all the needs of living. 
There is rest at the centre. Thou losest nothing 
if thou losest not God. Let the world go past 
with its dust and noise, with its fret and fume. 
My soul, wait thou upon God. 



The Quest of Happiness 

A STUDY OF VICTORY OVER LIFE'S TROUBLES 

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn; Author of "The Influence 
of Christ in Modern Life," etc. 

Cloth, with colored page borders. $1.50 net 

" ' The Quest of Happiness ' is Dr. Hillis's very best book. It is strong, 
vivid, clear, and has a certain indefinable human quality which will be 
sure to give it a large circulation and make it a source of great helpfulness. 
I especially enjoyed the 'Forewords.' They would make an attractive 
volume in themselves." — Amory H. Bradford, Pastor First Congrega- 
tional Church, Montclair, N.J. 

" Like everything from Dr. Hillis, ' The Quest of Happiness ' is original 
in conception and eloquent in expression. It is a book sure of a wide and 
helpful influence. I can scarcely think of any better service that could be 
rendered the crowds out in search of happiness than to acquaint them with 
this guide-book to the Land they are looking for." — Charles Wood, 
Second Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. 



The Influence of Christ in Modern Life 

BEING A STUDY OF THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE CHURCH 
IN AMERICAN SOCIETY 

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

Author of "The Quest of Happiness," etc. 

Cloth 121110 $1.50 

" Written especially for the educated young men of the country, and 
for the multitudes who are busied with the ten thousand duties of daily 
life, who are asking what is left of the evangel of Christ now that the 
critical era is past. Every eloquent chapter is a spiritual uplift and a 
strengthener of faith in the unique claims and character of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." — Epworth Herald. 

" The new theology finds forceful utterance here. In Dr. Hillis's dis- 
course one is often reminded of his predecessor in the Central Church at 
Chicago, the lamented David Swing. There is the same sparkle of imagi- 
nation and wealth of illustration, the same sympathetic feeling and human 
warmth, the same light but firm touch, the same persuasiveness." — The 
Outlook. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



Vocal and Literary Interpretation 
of the Bible 

By S. S. CURRY, Ph.D. 

Acting Davis Professor of Elocution of Newton 
Theological Institution 

With an Introduction by FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D., Dean of the 
Divinity School, Harvard University 

Professor Curry's book on " The Vocal Interpretation of the Bible " 
goes into a good many themes which are not necessarily associated with 
the title. Much of the author's life has been devoted to teaching elocu- 
tion and expression, and primarily his book is designed to show young 
men about to enter the ministry, lay readers, and others who have occa- 
sion to read the Bible aloud, how to bring out the full meaning and the 
largest possible part of the beauty of the sacred book. But it enters, also, 
into many of the subjects dealt with in Bible classes, and interprets vari- 
ous phases and portions of the Bible in a way which will prove attractive, 
significant, and remunerative. There is more in this book than is con- 
veyed by the title. On the one hand, it will interest young people; while, 
on the other, clergymen will find in it suggestive comments on the reading 
of the Bible in church. The book contains a helpful introduction by 
Professor Francis Greenwood Peabody, of Harvard, author of " Jesus 
Christ and the Social Question." 



Happiness 

ESSAYS ON THE MEANING OF LIFE 

By CARL HILTY 

University of Bern 

Translated by FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D., Dean of the 

Divinity School, Harvard University 

Cloth 1 2 mo $1.25 net 

"The author makes his appeal, not to discussion, but to life; . . . that 
which draws readers to the Bern professor is his capacity to maintain in 
the midst of important duties of public service and scientific activity an 
unusual detachment of desire and an interior quietness of mind." 

— New York Times. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



The Religion of an Educated Man 

THREE LECTURES 

By FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY 

Dean of the Divinity School, Harvard University 

Cloth 1 2 mo $1.00 net 

a They are pregnant with suggestion and reveal a depth of broad 
Christian scholarship together with a keen insight into the demands 
of the modern world upon the scholar." 

— New York Commercial Advertiser . 

" His logic is sound, and the sane, temperate tone of his essays 
invites conviction." — Milwaukee Sentinel. 



Jesus Christ and the Social Question 

An Examination of the Teaching of Jesus in its Relation 
to Some Problems of Modern Social Life 

By FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY 

Author of "The Religion of an Educated Man," etc. 

Cloth i2mo $1.50 

a In this ' Examination of the Teaching of Jesus in its Relation 
to Some of the Problems of Modern Social Life' Professor Peabody 
begins with a careful discussion of the comprehensiveness of this 
teaching as at once perfectly apt and adequate to every possible 
condition and need. He then considers the social principles of 
this teaching ; its relation to the family, to the rich, to the care of 
the poor, to the industrial order. The concluding chapter is espe- 
cially good, setting forth ' the Correlation of the Social Questions. 1 
It is shown how this fact should affect those who are actually inter- 
ested in particular reforms.'" — Times-Herald, Chicago. 

"It is vital, searching, comprehensive. The Christian reader 
will find it an illumination ; the non-Christian a revelation. 1 ' 

— The Epworth Herald. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 












Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 11 Thi 

Cranberry Township, f/ 

(724)779-2111 



A ^ A 






,0o 



**'* 



%/ 



<*' A 



^V < U .J ,li \ ' 
























.--■: 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

" 'lll iM 

1 1 1 1 I ! ' 
010 638 533 6 



i . 



